[antiwar-van] UPDATED: Tues Forum on Racism, Immigrants, and Immigration

[Harsha]

EMERGENCY COMMUNITY FORUM ON RACISM, IMMIGRANTS, AND IMMIGRATION

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Tuesday October 16, 2007 @ 6 pm
Philippine Women’s Centre
451 Powell Street (between Dunlevy and Jackson, 2 blocks east of Main
Street) Vancouver, occupied Coast Salish territory
Children welcome.
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*** Community updates from various individuals, community organizers
including Gurpreet Singh, and groups including Association of Chinese
Canadians for Equality and Solidarity Society, Chinese-Canadian National
Council, No One Is Illegal, Justicia for Migrant Workers, Ugnayan Filipino
Youth Canadian Alliance, Indigenous Action Movement, Japanese-Canadian
Human Rights Committee, PICS, and others.

Hosted by No One is Illegal-Vancouver. For more information contact
noii-van at resist.ca or call 778 885-0040. www.nooneisillegal.org.

In light of increasing racial violence against immigrants, the normalizing
of public racist discourse against immigrants, and escalating border and
security measures that are disproportionately impacting racialized
communities, we are organizing an emergency community forum and
discussion.  We strongly encourage all communities and individuals that
are being impacted as well as all allies to attend in order to build a
more broad-based and effective anti-racist movement.

Although nothing new, in the past few months we are witnessing an
escalation of overt racial attacks and discourse, for example recent acts
of violence against South Asian elders and farmworkers, the phenomenon of
“nippertipping” against Asian-Canadian fisherfolk; and countless highly
publicized incidents suggesting that immigrants are not ‘integrating
properly’ as evident through Bruce Allen’s comments, the reasonable
accommodation’ hearings in Quebec, the issue about identifying women in
hijab, and much more.

We understand how these incidents are not exceptions; rather they are more
obvious examples of an underlying racism that continuously places
racialized immigrants (although not white immigrants) as ‘Outsiders’ to
the Canadian nation and so-called Canadian culture. It is evident how this
racism has created a general climate of hysteria, distrust, and skepticism
of immigrant communities. The very fact that entire communities are
considered ‘immigrant’ although many of have resided on the indigenous
territories of Turtle Island for centuries, reveals their second-class
positioning.

Therefore we feel that such comments are not harmless or simply an issue
of free speech; they are used to normalize overt and covert systems of
racism and exclusion- especially to demonize societies of the global South
who are impacted by Western militarization and occupation and through
domestic repressive immigration, border, and security policies: the
deportation of ‘unwanted’ migrants such as Laibar Singh who are considered
‘drains to the system’; the denial of rights to migrant workers who are
only valued for their labour but not their human dignity;  continued
associated of immigrants to terrorism through use of Security Certificates
and racial profiling particularly of Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern, and
South Asian men; summary deportation of Latin American and Caribbean
asylum-seekers at the Eastern border who are being portrayed as ‘illegal
immigrants flooding’ the Canadian border, and much more.

We hope you will join us in this crucial community forum and discussion
and to together build on historical struggles and resistance movements
against racism.