[mobglob-discuss] NOII Statement & Urgent Support to Scrap Bill C50!

[Harsha Walia]

CROSS-COUNTRY MOBILIZING AGAINST BILL C-50...

YOUR URGENT SUPPORT NEEDED- CALL, FAX, OR EMAIL LIBERAL AND NDP MPS TO
SCRAP BILL C-50!

*** WED APRIL 9 - FRI APRIL 11, 2008: Flood the offices of Liberal and NDP
Members of Parliament with calls, emails and faxes to pressure them to
vote AGAINST Bill C-50.


On March 14th 2008, 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'. In respose to an
overwhelming negative response to these amendements- including the
Canadian Bar Association- the Immigration Minister has recently been
forced to attempt to spin these regressive changes as being guided by the
principles of 'fairness'!

* A full backgrounder and statement on Bill C 50 and its impacts is
included below *


+++> TAKE 5 MINUTES TO PRESSURE MPS TO VOTE AGAINST BILL C-50 <+++

Flood the Opposition parties with your calls, faxes and emails. Demand
that they must vote against this Bill; accepting the bill, or abstaining
from voting on it, would send the message that they are in support of the
anti-immigrant agenda of this Bill.

1) Contact your MP:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalCode.aspx

2) Contact key MP's (please contact them all!)
- Stephane Dion
Tel: (514) 335-6655. Fax: (514) 335-2712. Email: DionS at parl.gc.ca
- Maurizio Bevilacqua
Tel: (905) 303-5000 or (613) 996-4971. Email: Bevilacqua.M at parl.gc.ca -
Irwin Cotler
Tel: (514) 283-0171. Fax: (514) 739-9452. Email: cotler.i at parl.gc.ca -
Ujjal Dosanjh
Tel: (604) 775-5323. Email: dosanjh.u at parl.gc.ca
- Hedy Fry
Tel: (604) 666-0135. Email: Fry.H at parl.gc.ca
- Sukh Dhaliwal
Tel: (604) 598-2200. Email: dhalis at parl.gc.ca
- Jack Layton
Tel: (613) 947-0867 Fax: (613) 947-0868. Email: laytoj at parl.gc.ca
- Olivia Chow
Tel: 416-533-2710. Fax: 416-533-2236. Email: chowo at parl.gc.ca


########  BACKGROUNDER: Scrap Bill C-50!  ########

On March 14th 2008, the Conservative government introduced a series of
amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), buried in
Bill c-50, a 136-page “budget implementation bill”.

This fundamentally undemocratic move sneaks in critical changes to
Canada’s immigration policy without proposing any of those changes before
Parliament. By making it a matter of confidence, the government forces
Opposition parties to either accept them or call an election.

This series of amendments places more arbitrary power in the hands of the
Immigration Minister:

-	Under the existing s. 11 of the IRPA, anyone who meets the already
stringent criteria to enter Canada as a worker, student, visitor, or
permanent resident, shall be granted that status. However, under the
proposed changes, despite meeting the criteria, the Minister will have the
discretion to arbitrarily reject an application.

-	Sec. 25 currently says that the Minister “shall” examine a Humanitarian
and Compassionate application – this is changed to “shall” examine the H&C
application if the applicant is in Canada, but only “may” examine the
application if the applicant is outside Canada. Although the government
claims will have no impact on family reunification, in practice it will
have a serious impact on family reunification as H&C applications are one
of the most frequent avenues for family reunification (for example
separated refugee children).

-	Proposed s. 87.3 of the Act will allow the Minister to issue
“instructions” setting quotas on the “category” of person that can enter
Canada – including quotas based on country of origin.  This unprecedented
modification of IRPA would risk putting in place implicit equivalents to
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”, or the  “None
is too many” rule applied to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi concentration
camps in 1945.

-	Ministerial power in deciding the order in which new applications are
processed, regardless of when they were filed. This means prioritizing
immigration applicants based on their ability to fulfill the needs of the
Canadian job market, “whether it's people to wash dishes and make
sandwiches, or whether it's the highly skilled engineers”, as stated by
Minister Diane Finley. This is a profoundly dehumanizing and racist
conception of immigrants as disposable commodities.

-	New sections 87.3 (4) and (5) of the IRPA would allow the Minister to
simply hold on to, return, or throw out a visa application and deny any
opportunity to review that decision in Court. This precedent is truly
alarming, especially in the context of a deeply flawed appeals process,
including the existing lack of implementation of a Refugee Appeal
Division, despite being provided for under IRPA.


The Conservatives argue that these changes are necessary to “modernize”
the immigration system and reduce the existing backlog.  However, the true
objective is clear from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s comments that the
government seeks a “competitive immigration system which will quickly
process skilled immigrants who can make an immediate contribution to the
economy."

The major lobby behind these changes comes from employers’ organizations
and business lobbies. Indeed, Bill C-50 is being praised primarily by
business associations. Philip Hochstein, president of the Independent
Contractors and Businesses Association of British Columbia, has stated
that the government is moving in the right direction by focusing on
Canada’s economic needs, “We need strong, young, willing workers to come,
much like the people who built this country.”

Mr. Hochstein seems to forget the historical exploitation of immigrant
workers, the most well-known example of which is the Chinese railway
workers. The estimated 17,000 Chinese workers who came to Canada from
1881-1884 were met with dangerous working conditions and discrimination
upon their arrival. Chinese workers earned $1 a day, and it is estimated
that anywhere from 1500-2500 Chinese migrants died during the construction
of the railway. As soon as this dangerous work was completed, the message
was clear: Chinese people were no longer welcome.

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. 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.  Immigration policy will serve the needs of Canadian industry by
regulating migration and providing a flexible labour pool rather than
upholding the dignity of migrants.

These changes are directly in line with Canada’s commitment to the
Security and Prosperity Partnership, which lays out the need for a rapid
expansion of both “low-skill” temporary guest worker programs and
“high-skill” professionals. In Canada today, the number of people admitted
each year on temporary worker visas is greater than the number admitted as
permanent residents. We must reject temporary migrant worker programs of
indentured servitude and call for the unconditional right of migrant
workers to permanent residency and labour rights equal to those of
citizens.

At the same time, such changes comes at the deliberate expense of
refugees, non-status migrants, or those seeking family reunification- who
are seen as increasingly ‘undesirable’ and potential security threats in
light of repressive post 9/11 controls. Decisions such as the $101 million
arming of Canadian border guards; the establishment of Canadian Border
Services Agency as an enforcement division in processing refugee claims
that sends the message that refugee claimants are a threat to public
safety; the ongoing unjust use of Security Certificates against
non-citizens; the implementation of the Safe Third Country Agreement
between the Canada and US which has drastically reduced the number of
asylum seekers able to make a claim in Canada; and increasing rates of
deportation to over 13,000 a year from Canada have all perpetuated a
racist, anti-poor, and anti-migrant agenda.

This agenda is normalized due to the heightened racialized national
identity of Canada that continuously places racialized immigrants
(although not white immigrants) as ‘Outsiders’ to the Canadian nation. For
example, much of the opposition to this Bill has challenged the secretive
process behind the bill, while still accepting the norm that “Canada
should be able to select its preferred immigrants”, thus feeding into the
commodification of migrants and the assertion of Canada’s sovereign and
racist right to select who it allows to remain, as reminiscent through the
Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese-Canadian internment, and Komagatamaru
incident. Therefore although nothing new, in the post 9/11 climate, we are
witnessing an escalation of attacks against ‘immigrants’- the eternally
hyphenated citizens- for example through the reasonable accommodation’
hearings, the wearing of the hijab and turban, the phenomenon of
“nippertipping” against Asian-Canadians, and many more. The constant
questioning of immigrants (although most are long-time citizens) “ability
to integrate”, their “suspicious behaviours”, their “overburdening of the
system”, and their “Third World traditions” reveals an incredibly shallow
multiculturalism.

This mutual reinforcement of corporate and state interests - cheap labor
and national identity, respectively – evident in the prioritization of
labour market needs within the global War on Terror, is legitimized not
only by recourse to colonial and racist discourse but also by the constant
cultivation of fear in the hearts and minds of citizens. The production of
migrants as disposable commodities goes in tandem with their construction
as the dangerous “Other” or “The Enemy Within” as the threat they pose can
be tamed through a process of commodification and the withholding of
citizenship rights as a mechanism of social control. Fear of the
“dangerous Other” thus underwrites the production of exclusivist
nationalist identity (and therefore support for the state) while fear of
the “commodifiable Other” (as "stealing" employment and eroding the social
system) produces fearful and disciplined citizens vulnerable to increasing
corporate exploitation and state repression.

Therefore, the general message to poor and working people of colour and
their families- the overwhelming majority of migrants from the Global
South- is that they need not apply as permanent residents unless they are
willing to come as temporary workers in exploitative jobs and whose status
will be legally reinforced as ‘non-Canadians’. This is particularly
revolting in a context where the Canadian government and Canadian
corporations actively participate in the creation and reinforcement of a
system of global displacement of migrants and refugees who are fleeing
poverty, persecution, war and corporate exploitation of their lands.

In light of this reality, we call for an end to deportation and detentions
and a comprehensive, transparent, inclusive and ongoing regularization
program that is equitable and accessible to all persons living without
permanent residency in Canada to ensure free migration and full rights for
all those who seek them. We also call for the abolition of agreements such
as NAFTA and the SPP, which are making Canadian borders increasingly open
to capital and those who represent capital, while at the same time
restricting the movement of those who have been displaced by these very
same neoliberal policies.

At a most basic level, we must also challenge the notion that some
migrants are more worthy than others; we believe that freedom of movement
is a fundamental human right and we struggle for a world in which no one
is forced to migrate against their will and where people can move freely
in order to live and flourish in justice and dignity.

NO ONE IS ILLEGAL!

* For more information, contact No One Is Illegal-Vancouver
www.nooneisillegal.org
email: noii-van at resist.ca