[antiwar-van] NOII: Jason Kenney Hates Your Grandparents

[Harsha W.]

Jason Kenney Hates Your Grandparents

http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=4574

Minister Jason Kenney is yet again falsely saying that Canada is accepting
a record number of migrants. He made a recent announcement about
increasing the number of parents and grandparents visas to 25,000 in 2012.
What Kenney failed to mention was that it was actually under the
Conservative government that immigration quotas were drastically dropping
in the first place. According to a Toronto Star report, family class
immigration has dropped by 10,000 people – which is 15% – under the
Conservatives. This past year Jason Kenney made the backlog crisis of over
165,000 people worse by slashing sponsorship visas by 25%, while
collecting millions of dollars in profit in sponsorship fees.

As of November 2011, Ottawa has also completely stopped accepting
applications for immigration sponsorships of parents and grandparents
until 2014. Instead parents and grandparents can apply for the “Parent and
Grandparent (of the Rich 1%) Super Visa” which requires a minimum income
and sets the dangerous two-tier precedent of requiring family members to
provide private Canadian health-care insurance. Kenney also announced that
the quota for spouses and children will be reduced by 4,000 per year. Our
lives and our family’s well-being is just a numbers game for him.

Kenney is known as the ‘Minister of Censorship and Deportation’ because he
is one of the most unjust immigration ministers. Deportations have
increased, the number of skilled worker visas has decreased by about 20%,
and the quota allotted for live-in caregivers to become permanent
residents has been slashed by half. Instead, Kenney has increased the
number of temporary workers who have no rights of residency and are
constantly exploited for their labour. By shutting the door to refugees,
family sponsorships, and skilled workers, Canada is ensuring that migrants
are being recruited primarily as indentured labour for big business.

Without any value for the dignity of migrants or community kinship,
Kenney’s model is Permanent Temporariness: of migrant worker programs and
now a temporary family reunification program. The reality is that Canada
depends on the stolen labour of migrants – as dangerous and low-wage
labour in the formal economy and unpaid labour in the domestic sphere. We
cannot allow divisive, racist, and false ideas of migrants ‘stealing our
jobs and resources’ to let the Harper government off the hook for
prioritizing the slashing of critical public services, bailing out banks
and subsidizing corporations, destroying Indigenous lands and the
environment, and sinking billions into prisons and the military. Join with
people across the country rejecting Kenney and Harper’s agenda!

The People v. Kenney
Freedom to move
Right to stay, and to Return
We are many.

The People v. Kenney Campaign: http://noii-van.resist.ca/?page_id=4139
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
Twitter: http://twitter.com/noii_vancouver


-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group



-- 
Harsha Walia

https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group