[antiwar-van] Tues May 13: URGENT ACTION against Bill C50!

[Harsha]

refuse to be invisible
join the fight
against racist immigration laws

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TAKE ACTION AGAINST BILL C-50
NO TO REPRESSIVE IMMIGRATION CONTROLS!

TUESDAY, MAY 13TH @ 5 P.M.
meet outside BURRARD SKYTRAIN STATION
(corner Burrard and Dunsmuir)

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WHAT IS BILL C50?

/arbitrarily reject/ an immigration application, even if it meets
criteria/ have the power to issue restriction quotas on the category and
the country of origin of people/ control the order in which applications
are processed/ simply hold on to, return or throw out a visa application.


Recently the Conservative government introduced a series of amendments to
the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act buried in Bill c-50, the
'budget implementation bill'.

This fundamentally undemocratic move sneaks in critical changes to
Canada’s immigration policy without proposing any of those changes before
Parliament. These sweeping changes will give enormous and arbitrary powers
to the Minister around application processing, while perpetuating a racist
and anti-poor agenda of setting immigration agendas based on 'labour
market needs'. The government is stating that these measures are a
solution to the growing backlog by essentially giving the Minister the
power to kick people off the backlog/waiting list.

By excluding immigrants based on their country of origin, this Bill
reproduces openly racist immigration policies in Canada, like the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923, the Order in Council of 1911 prohibiting
the landing of “any immigrant belonging to the Negro race”, that of 1923
excluding “any immigrant of any Asiatic race”, the “None is too many” rule
applied to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe during Second
World War, or the targeting and internment of Japanese and
Italian Canadians during Second World War.

These proposed legislative changes come in the context of a global
capitalist and nationalist reinforcement of labour flexibility as the
guiding principle of immigration policy, where migrants are only as
valuable as their labour. In conjunction with the Security and Prosperity
Partnership AGreement, it is clear that the priorities will be relatively
wealthy people applying under the skilled worker program and investor
classes, as well as increasingly vulnerable temporary migrant workers.

It also means that people who are not deemed “useful” to the current
Canadian market are simply not welcome, which would disproportionately
affect poor people, elders, children, people with health problems and
disabilities, and so called “unskilled” – mostly women – workers. Indeed,
the major lobby behind these changes comes from employers’ organizations
and business lobbies.

In respose to an overwhelming negative reaction to these amendements, the
Immigration Minister has recently been forced to attempt to spin these
regressive changes, including launching a intense advertising campaign
only in ethnic media to help get the bill through second reading within
the next week or two!

Join us in an action to call for the scrapping of Bill C-50! Demand
justice and dignity for migrants- No One Is Illegal!

** For a joint statement by No One Is Illegal chapters, visit:
http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=696

** For recent articles and other resources on Bill C50, visit:
http://noii-van.resist.ca/?cat=13


Organized by: No One Is Illegal Vancouver
http://noii-van.resist.ca  noii-van at resist.ca  604-779-9306