[Indigsol] Fwd: What is No One Is Illegal?

[mattm-b at resist.ca]

>>> WHAT IS NO ONE IS ILLEGAL VANCOUVER  <<<

*  Check us out at http://noii-van.resist.ca/  *


==> ABOUT US <==

No One is Illegal-Vancouver is a grassroots anti-colonial
immigrant/refugee rights community collective with leadership from members
of migrant and/or racialized backgrounds. Our collective is predominantly
people of colour and women. The No One is Illegal campaign has two goals:
to attain concrete victories for immigrants and refugees and to develop
the communities’ own capacity to attain justice and dignity for themselves
and their families. We strive and struggle for a world in which no one is
forced to migrate. We also strive and struggle for a world where people
can move freely in order to live and flourish in justice and dignity.

We are in active confrontation with a colonial system built on the
dispossession and genocide of indigenous peoples - such as through the
1876 Indian Act, the reserve system, and residential schools– and racist
anti-immigrant measures- since the historic Chinese Exclusion Act and
Japanese-Canadian internment to the current use of Security Certificates.
Such legislations and structures serve to label entire communities as
"illegal aliens" or "status Indians", an apartheid system of who has the
right to dignity and livelihood and who does not.

Instead, we maintain that there are no illegal human beings, only inhumane
and illegal laws.  As a movement for self-determination that challenges
the ideology inherent to immigration controls, we are in full
confrontation with Canadian border policies; denouncing and taking action
to combat racial profiling, detention and deportation, the national
security apparatus, law enforcement brutality, and exploitative working
conditions of migrants.

As we struggle for the right for our communities to maintain their
livelihoods, we prioritize building alliances and supporting indigenous
sisters and brothers fighting displacement. We recognize that those
colonial and capitalist forces that create war, poverty, and destruction
throughout the global South are causing dispossession of indigenous
peoples within the global North. Therefore our work must be carried out in
solidarity with the struggles for the self-determination and justice of
indigenous communities.

There is a clear link between capitalist globalization worldwide and the
displacement of peoples due to militarization, poverty, globalization,
violence, and exploitation. Canadian immigration policies serve to
consolidate the development of Fortress North America, using free trade to
open borders to capital, while exploiting the people- mostly women- whose
free movement it regulates through displacement, deportation, and the
creation of hyper-exploitable labour on which the economy of the North is
built upon.

Our work also furthers an analysis that links the "War on Terror" abroad
to the racist "Fortress North America" at home. In the post 911 climate,
various laws and policies have lead to the stereotyping and
criminalization of entire communities, in particular Muslim, Arab, and
South Asian communities. Legislation such as the Immigration and Refugee
Protection Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act has strengthened the association
between terrorism and immigration. We reject those apologists who claim
that racist policies such as Security Certificates, Anti-Terrorism
Legislation, Smart Border Policies, and Safe Third Country Agreement make
North America safer.

We also place ourselves within the broader movement for global justice
struggling against capitalism, homophobia, imperialism, occupation,
militarism, patriarchy, poverty, war, and other systems of oppression and
exploitation because we recognize that these are interconnected systems of
oppression and domination that reflect and reinforce each other. We
educate against injustice from all these perspectives and act to eradicate
all these systems of exploitation and oppression.

Finally, we organize from the basic principle that directly affected
communities and individuals lead their own struggles for justice and
self-determination. Those of us who participate in these struggles as
allies do so from a position of solidarity not charity. We see strength in
our unity and real justice will come as communities in struggle build
greater trust in visions of an alternate world and organize, educate, act
and fight for their own self-determination.


==> WHAT WE DEMAND <==

1) Dismantle Fortress North America!

Canadian borders are becoming increasingly open to capital, while at the
same time restricting the movement of those who have been displaced by
free trade policies. Government policies to open borders to profits while
closing them to human beings are being negotiated and signed in complete
secrecy - with great consequences for the environment and basic human
rights. We call for the abolition of the following agreements:

>> Scrap the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement: In March 2005,
the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States- with intense
lobbying from North America’s most powerful corporations- signed the
Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The basic aim
of SPP is to allow for free corporate access across borders through
economic integration, while establishing a security perimeter that
tightens borders to the movement of people.

>> Safe Third Country Agreement: The Safe Third Country Agreement is one
of the most draconian violations of the rights of migrants in Canadian
history. This agreement does not allow (with minor exceptions)
asylum-seekers into Canada if they first arrive in the U.S. According to
the Immigration and Refugee Board’s own statistics, the number of asylum
seekers able to make a claim in Canada has been drastically reduced by
approximately 40% since the Agreement’s implementation on December 29,
2004.

>> Canada-US Smart Border Accord: The 2001 Canada-US Smart Border Accord
allows for incredibly invasive measures such as biometric identifiers,
permanent resident cards, sharing advance passenger information,
coordinated no-fly lists, integrated border and marine enforcement teams,
and shared border surveillance.


2) Stop border militarization and the expanding security apparatus!

“National security” concerns have had a direct impact on Canadian
immigration policies and have been used as a pretext for enhancing
immigration controls. In the post-911 climate, the criminalization of
immigrants – particularly of those of South Asian, Muslim, and Arab
descent - has brought about an ever-expanding security apparatus that is
less about protecting society than it is about creating a culture of fear.
It also serves as a convenient distraction from the reality that people’s
daily lives are increasingly unsafe and insecure due to global neoliberal
economics and war-mongering. Some measures and projects that should be
abolished include the:

>> Anti-Terrorism Act which grants police forces extraordinary
investigative and surveillance powers, authorizes arrests without
warrants and allows for preventive detention on the basis of mere
suspicion, all on the basis of a vague and imprecise definition of
‘terrorist activity’.

>> Security Certificates that allow the government to detain and deport
non-citizens without charge on secret evidence and has been declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2007.

>> Section 86 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that allows
for secret hearings and secret evidence to be used against
non-residents, such as those in the refugee process.

>> Proposed Bill-C18 which would have given the government the power to
use secret evidence to strip a Canadian of citizenship and deport them.

>> Canadian Border Services Agency which was created in 2003 as an
enforcement division and is involved in processing refugee claims, thus
sending the message that refugee claimants are a threat to public
safety

>> Heightened surveillance network through programs such as the Smart
Border Action Plan as well as the Echelon international network of
communications surveillance.

>> Arming of Canada’s border guards over the next ten years at a cost of
$101 million, and the federal Conservatives’ plans to spend an
additional $1.4 billion on border security and policing.

>> Minutemen Project and other border vigilante groups, many of whom have
clear ties to white supremacist groups and carry out armed border
patrols. Government officials have either openly or tacitly supported such
groups whose work actually harm and terrorize migrant communities.


3) Status for all!

Regularization is an issue of self-determination and justice. Without
status, hundreds of thousands of so-called “illegal” migrants are forced
to live underground where they face extreme poverty, inadequate access to
health care and education, and under the constant threat of detention and
deportation. At the same time, many sectors of the Canadian economy depend
on the highly exploitable labour of non-status people.

Our national Status for All campaign has developed 12 principles of
regularization, most fundamentally demanding a comprehensive, transparent,
inclusive and ongoing regularization program that is equitable and
accessible to all persons living without permanent residency in Canada.
While any regularization program is in process, all levels of government
in Canada must guarantee non-status people full and equal access to health
care, social assistance, education, childcare, employment, labour
protection, housing, legal aid and domestic violence services without fear
of criminalization, detention or deportation.


4) End detentions and deportations!

Seeking asylum and making the decision to migrate is a right, not a crime.
However, an increasing number of migrants are being placed behind bars
where they are often shackled and verbally or physically abused.
Approximately 10,000 asylum seekers per year have been detained by
Canadian immigration for a time period ranging from 48 hours to over 18
months. The vast majority of detentions are strategies of forcible
confinement in order to ensure deportation, and thus represent the
unquestioned legitimacy of state sovereignty in criminalizing the mere act
of migration.

The popular conception is those whom Canada ultimately deports are
‘undesirables’ who ‘failed’ the legal processes to become a refugee or an
immigrant. However, the reality is that an increasing number of asylum
seekers are being deported because of structural flaws in the refugee
determination process. For example, Immigration and Refugee Board members
are political appointees who are not required to have any experience in
the law; there is no Refugee Appeal Division despite its guarantee
provided in the June 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act; certain
avenues such as the Pre Removal Risk Assessment have acceptance rates of
3-5% while others such as the Humanitarian and Compassionate claim do not
have to be processed prior to deportation. The refugee system has been
termed a ‘lottery system’ because acceptance rates can vary from 0-80%
depending on the judge. At a most basic level, we challenge the notion
that some migrants are more worthy than others; we believe that freedom of
movement is a fundamental human right.


5) Dignity for immigrant workers!

Even immigrants with permanent residency face conditions of
underemployment and inequities in income. A Statistics Canada study
indicates that even after 10 years in Canada, one-fifth of
university-educated immigrants are still working in low-income jobs.
Immigrant women of colour are particularly over-represented in work
characterized by low wages, dangerous working conditions, irregular hours,
lack of unionization and instability, such as garment work, domestic work,
home support work, cooking, and dishwashing. Policies of privatization and
outsourcing have furthered precarious working conditions for migrants:

>> Changes to BC’s Employment Standards Act in 2002 have meant less worker
protections and more labour market ‘flexibility’ for employers. The
$6/hour “training wage” - instead of the regular $8 per hour minimum wage
-has been established for the first 500 hours of work for those who are
new to the labour force. Farmworkers in B.C, predominantly immigrant
workers, are excluded from key labour standards regulating hours of work,
safety regulations, and overtime pay.

>> Lack of accreditation at a national level means that immigrants who are
trained within non-western educational or scientific traditions
experience great difficulties in gaining recognition for their training
and skills.

>> Sponsorship regulations stipulate that immigrants are unable to sponsor
their families to come to Canada if they are on social assistance. In
addition, a sponsored family member who, over a period of 2-10 years,
accesses social assistance, including disability assistance, must repay
this ‘loan’ to the government. As a result, immigrants are forced into
low-wage, dangerous work that few Canadians would do.


6) Abolish temporary foreign worker programs!

The Canadian economy has become increasingly dependent on highly
exploitative foreign worker programs, with the number of foreign workers
in B.C. doubling over the past three years. Fundamental features of
foreign worker programs include low wages, long hours without overtime
pay, dangerous working conditions, crowded and unhealthy accommodations
and denial of access to basic social services. Workers are virtually held
captive by employers who seize their identification and documentation, and
threaten them with repatriation if they assert their rights.

The temporary legal status of migrant workers makes them extremely
vulnerable to abuse, and allows Canadian industries to reap high profits
while driving down the wages of all workers. They also maintain the
sanctity of a white Canadian identity by withholding permanent residency
to workers legally designated as “foreign temporary” workers. The number
of people admitted each year on temporary worker visas is greater than the
number admitted as permanent residents. We reject such programs of
indentured servitude and call for the unconditional right of migrant
workers to permanent residency and labour rights equal to those of
citizens.


7) Fundamental transformation of migration controls!

The assertion of Canada’s sovereign right to select who it allows to
remain within its borders has always been the primary function of
immigration policies such as through racist historical measures including
the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese-Canadian internment, and Komagatamaru
incident. For every ‘good’ migrant, there is always a ‘bad’ migrant who is
forcibly expelled from Canada. Given this reality, we don’t believe the
immigration system can simply be reformed. Rather we need to rethink what
function and whose interests the state border actually serves.

Furthermore, the current trends of global migration reveal the ways in
which colonialism and corporate globalization have enriched some countries
by impoverishing others and creating economic and political insecurity
that forces people indigenous to their lands to migrate. In response to
the realities of this global apartheid, we struggle for a world in which
no one is forced to migrate against their will, and also for a world where
people can move freely in order to live and flourish in justice and
dignity.







-- 
"All oppression is relative.
All oppression is specific."

- Albert Memmi