[antiwar-van] NOII Alert: Axe the Refugee Exclusion Act!

[Harsha W.]

NOII Alert: Axe the Refugee Exclusion Act!

Share this link: http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=4717

Statement endorsed by No One Is Illegal Halifax, No One Is Illegal
Toronto, and No One Is Illegal Vancouver Coast Salish Territories

Last week Minister of Censorship and Deportation Jason Kenney tabled Bill
C-31, an omnibus Refugee Exclusion Act. This Act is racist.  It creates a
two-tier system of refugee protection, increases incarceration, denies and
revokes legal status, and violently targets and expels refugees and
migrants from Canada.

Under the proposed Refugee Exclusion Act, the following provisions will be
established:

- Conditional residency for accepted refugees: Asylum seekers who have
already been accepted as refugees and have acquired permanent residency
but not Canadian citizenship risk losing their status. If the Minister
determines that certain refugees no longer need protection, their
residency status can be revoked and they will face deportation even after
having lived in Canada for years. This abolishes refugee protection and
permanent status for refugees. Instead, it introduces the dangerous
concept of conditional residence for refugees, whose lives are already
marked by trauma, precarity, and instability. This bill also grants the
state the right to retroactively strip refugees of their status.

-  A discriminatory two-tier asylum system: The new bill creates a racist
and discriminatory two-tier system of asylum that forces shorter timelines
for processing (15 days), denies the right to appeal, and restricts legal
avenues for certain refugees based on nationality. This Act grants
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney arbitrary authority to designate certain
countries as ‘safe,’ thus denying large numbers of refugees the right to a
fair hearing based on their individual circumstances, as is required by
the Refugee Convention to which Canada is a signatory. This will
particularly impact women, queers, and racial minorities fleeing
persecution based on gender, sexuality, and race. The decision to
determine which countries are ‘safe’ will be based entirely on political
considerations. For example, economic alliances and capitalist free trade
agreements between Canada and countries like Mexico and India would mean
that Canada will reject refugees from these “safe” countries.

- Mandatory incarceration for many refugees: The previous Human Smuggling
Bill (Bill C-49, then Bill C-4) has been rolled into the Refugee Exclusion
Act. Cloaked in the language of protecting victims of human smuggling,
these provisions actually punish and criminalize refugees. They are
modeled after Australia’s internationally condemned policies of mandatory
detention and human rights abuses against asylum-seekers, and were
previously rejected by all opposition parties and hundreds of community,
legal, health, human rights, and migrant justice groups in Canada. The
measures include: mandatory detention of “irregularly arriving” refugees
as young as 16 without review by the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB)
for 12 months; denial of the right to apply for permanent resident status
until five years after favourable determination of the refugee claim;
denial of access to humanitarian and compassionate applications, temporary
resident permits or refugee travel documents for five years or longer; and
denial of the right to appeal an unfavourable determination of a refugee
claim to the Refugee Appeal Division. In an era of austerity, mandatory
detention for irregularly arriving migrants under this Omnibus
anti-refugee Bill C-31 works in tandem with the Omnibus Crime Bill C-10.
Together, they are part of the Conservative agenda to expand prisons and
fill them with poor and racialized people.

The Refugee Exclusion Act is also being opposed by the Canadian Council
for Refugees, Amnesty International, the Canadian Association of Refugee
Lawyers, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. This latest Act is
part of a growing anti-immigrant agenda by Kenney, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper, and the Conservative party:

1 The number of refugees granted permanent residence has dropped by 25%.
Canada already accepts fewer than 20,000 refugees per year, less than 0.1%
of the world’s displaced populations. According to recent research, $92
million is spent on detention and deportation every year, with some $22
million being spent under the vague rubric of “Public Safety
Anti-Terrorism.” Between 2006 and 2011, Canadian Border Services Agency
carried out 83,382 deportations of women, children, and men, while from
2004-2010, more than 72,000 refugees were arbitrarily detained.

2 The Conservatives recently re-introduced anti-terror measures,
previously expired since 2007, under Bill S-7. The bill’s draconian
measures include investigative hearings even if a person has not been
charged and vague definitions of terrorism that particularly target
Muslims. This bill is an extension of the widely-decried counter-terrorism
strategy, which revealed that environmental activists, Indigenous land
defenders, anti capitalists, and immigrants are seen as domestic threats.

3 The Conservative government has issued multiple lists of migrants
charged with serious criminality or war crimes, often without evidence. As
legal organizations have stated: “The principle of the presumption of
innocence is undermined by the publication of this list. Most, if not all,
of the suspected war criminals’ have not been convicted of a crime.” In
addition, Jason Kenney and Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety, have
created vigilante snitch lines dedicated to reporting and deporting
people.

4 Family class immigration has dropped by 10,000 people or 15%. Kenney has
also placed a moratorium on sponsorships of parents and grandparents.
Instead, parents and grandparents have to apply for the temporary “Parent
and Grandparent (of the Rich 1%) Super Visa” which requires a minimum
income and private Canadian health-care insurance. Quotas for spouses and
children have also been reduced by 4,000 per year.

5 Kenney has proposed conditional residence status for sponsored spouses.
This would impose a two-year “conditional residency” on sponsored spouses,
common-law partners and conjugal partners. If sponsored spouses don’t stay
in the relationship they will be deported, thus placing women at increased
risk for spousal and partner abuse.

6 Skilled worker visas have been decreased by 20% and $53 million has been
cut from programs for new immigrants, including the cutting of public
funding from Palestine House. Kenney has recently announced that he
prefers an immigration system where employers can “hand-pick” immigrants.
This gross commodification of migrants as labour to be auctioned off is
racist, classist, and gendered, and maintains the ideology of White Canada
(reminiscent of the Chinese Head Tax era) that can use and expel labour at
its whim.

7 In 2011, Kenny unilaterally instituted a ban on the wearing of the niqab
during citizenship ceremonies. He also supports Quebec’s Bill C-94 that
discriminates against women who wear the niqab by denying them essential
public services.

8 In 2009, Kenney deliberately edited queers out of the new citizenship
guide. Faced with mounting opposition, the new guide now includes one
sentence referencing queers: “Canada’s diversity includes gay and lesbian
Canadians.” The guide also makes racist references to “barbaric cultural
practices,” a characterization that is deliberately devoid of a complex
analysis of gendered violence, especially those that the Canadian settler
state is complicit in.

9 The quota allotted for live-in caregivers to become permanent residents
has been slashed by almost 50%. The government will grant permanent
residency to 8,000 to 9,300 live-in caregivers in 2012. That’s down from
12,000 to 16,000 in 2011.

10 The number of temporary foreign workers, who have no rights to
permanent residency and are exploited constantly for their labour, is up
30%.  By 2009, more people (over 280,000 people) were coming into Canada
under temporary foreign worker programs than as permanent residents. The
government proposed major changes to foreign worker programs including
limiting most workers to a term of four years, after which a six-year ban
will be imposed before workers can return to Canada. With precarious legal
status, migrant workers are indentured in domestic work, agriculture,
tourism, resource extractive industries, and the service sector.

Kenney’s immigration model is one of temporariness. The Conservatives are
perfecting a system of containment and commodification of migrants through
racist fear-mongering parroted by the corporate media, and repressive
policies of exclusion through enhanced border militarization. Lack of full
status, conditional residency, deportations, detentions, anti-terror laws,
and security certificates make migrants vulnerable to exploitation,
poverty, and daily indignities.

By shutting the door to permanent residency for refugees, family
sponsorships, and skilled workers, Canada is ensuring that migrants are
recruited primarily as indentured labour for big business. Hundreds of
asylum-seekers languish behind bars, while hundreds of thousands of
temporary workers and non-status people toil in fields and factories. The
reality is that Canada depends on the low-wage labour of migrants. The
Canadian economy is built on the theft of Indigenous lands, the
exploitation of labour, especially slave, migrant, and reproductive labour
and the global appropriation of natural resources.

The whole immigration system is corrupt and inhumane; predicated on power,
violence, and control. Most migrants are displaced and migrate because of
corporate greed and the policies of imperialist powers. Although they are
told they are undesirable, capitalist industries and settler colonial
states require migrant and non-status people in order to reap high
profits. This dehumanization of migrants is reinforced by racism, where
Indigenous people and racialized people are deemed less worthy. The
anti-immigrant rhetoric of “illegals” and “terrorists” cultivates a
climate of fear and xenophobia that justifies the treatment of migrants as
sub-human. As grassroots anti-colonial migrant justice organizers, we
struggle for the right to remain, the freedom to move, and the right to
return.

We demand an end to detentions and deportations. We demand the abolition
of exploitative temporary worker programs, and instead demand immediate
status for all those who have been deemed temporary and illegal in order
to justify theft of their labour and lives. We cannot allow the government
to perpetuate divisive, racist, and false ideas that designate migrants as
‘bogus refugees’ who are ‘stealing our jobs.’ We cannot 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.

No One Is Illegal, Status for All People!
www.nooneisillegal.org
The People v. Kenney Campaign: http://noii-van.resist.ca/?page_id=4139
NEW Coordinated FB: http://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegalnetwork
NEW Coordinated Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nooneisillegal





-- 
You have received this email through No One is Illegal-Vancouver

Email: noii-van at resist.ca
Website: http://noii-van.resist.ca

Join our low traffic email announcement list:
https://lists.resist.ca/mailman/listinfo/noii-l

NEW! Connect to us through social media:
https://www.facebook.com/nooneisillegal
https://twitter.com/noii_vancouver
http://www.youtube.com/NoOneIsIllegalVan
http://www.flickr.com/nooneisillegal/

No One is Illegal-Vancouver Coast Salish Territories is a grassroots
anti-colonial migrant justice group with leadership from members of
migrant and/or racialized backgrounds. We strive and struggle for the
right to remain, the freedom to move, and the right to return. As a
movement for self-determination that challenges the ideology of
immigration controls, we take action to combat racial profiling, detention
and deportation, the national security apparatus, law enforcement
brutality, and exploitative working conditions of migrants. The ongoing
apartheid reality instituted through reserves and sweatshops is one that
must be fundamentally uprooted and transformed. We envision a humanity
where everyone has the right to sustenance and the ability to provide it,
where we are free of oppression, misery, and exploitation, and are able to
live meaningfully in relationship to one another and in reverence for
Mother Earth that sustains us.

_______________________________________________
Noii-l mailing list
Noii-l at lists.resist.ca
https://lists.resist.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/noii-l


-- 
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



-- 
Harsha Walia

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