[Wamvan] Joint NOII Response to Jason Kenney’s Staged Citizenship Ceremony]

[Harsha W.]

No One Is Illegal Toronto and No One Is Illegal Vancouver Coast Salish
Territories Respond to Jason Kenney’s Staged Citizenship Ceremony

** Watch our video response Citizenship Canada Bureaucratic Oath:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95IUTA6o6Mk

** Link with statement and video: http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=4669


Jason Kenney, Minister of Censorship and Deportation, is making headlines
again with yet another parliamentary scandal. A series of access to
information requests have revealed that Kenney's office organized a bogus
citizenship ceremony broadcast on Sun Media (the aspiring Fox News Network
of Canada). “Let’s do it. We can fake the oath,” said one Sun staffer, and
arranged for six federal bureaucrats to stand in as "immigrants." Kenney
has refused to apologize for this disgusting photo-op.

This is the latest in a series of political scandals surrounding Kenney.
Over a year ago, he rehired a senior aide who had been previously found to
be illegally soliciting money for advertising campaigns through the
“Conservative Ethnic Paid Media Strategy,” which targets immigrant voters.
Not much later, another Conservative staffer sent out an email to
community groups seeking people in "national folklore costumes which
represent their ethnic backgrounds" to appear at a Harper photo-op.

While these news-worthy scandals highlight the wheeling-and-dealing and
corruption within Kenney's office, we are troubled by the lack of anger
and outrage at the real scandal in Kenney's office: the racist
tokenization of immigrant communities to mask increasingly repressive
anti-migrant policies.

Under Kenney, Harper, and the Conservatives:

1) Kenney deliberately removed references to queer rights from the new
citizenship guide. He retreated only after confronted with mounting
opposition and the new guide now includes all of one sentence on “Canada's
diversity includes gay and lesbian Canadians.”

2) Kenny instituted a ban on niqabs 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.

3) Kenney introduced the Human Smuggling Bill C4, which is modeled after
Australia’s condemned policies of mandatory detention for certain
asylum-seekers, including children. Even Australia's own Supreme Court
denounced the legislation as "inhumane."

4) The number of refugees granted permanent residence has dropped by 25%.

5) Family class immigration has dropped by 10,000 people – which is 15%.

6) Kenney hates your grandparents. He has placed a moratorium on
sponsorships of parents and grandparents. Quotas for spouses and children
have been reduced by 4,000 per year.

7) Kenney has proposed conditional permanent residence for spouses, which
places women at increased risk for spousal and partner abuse.

8) Skilled worker visas have been decreased by 20%.

9) The quota allotted for live-in caregivers to become permanent residents
has been slashed by almost 50%.

10) The number of temporary foreign workers, who have no rights to
permanent residency and are constantly exploited for their labour, is up
30%.


Kenney’s immigration model is one of Permanent Temporariness. 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. The reality is that Canada depends on the stolen labour
of migrants as dangerous and low-wage labour. In fact, the Canadian state
and its economy are built on the theft of Indigenous lands; the
exploitation of labour, especially slave, migrant, and reproductive
labour; and the global appropriation of natural resources.

We believe the whole immigration system is corrupt and inhumane,
predicated on violence and control. Many of the reasons that people are
displaced and migrate is a result of the plundering of large corporations
and the foreign policy of imperialist world powers. Although they are told
they are undesirable, migrant and non-status people allow industries to
reap high profits. We believe that no person is worth their value in money
or labour. Such ideas are based on a capitalist economic system that
exploits humans and the land. It is reinforced by racism, where Indigenous
people and racialized people are deemed inherently less worthy and
desirable.

We demand an end to detentions and deportations. We demand the abolition
of exploitative temporary worker programs. We demand status for all those
who have been deemed illegal in order to justify theft of their labour and
lives. 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.

As grassroots anti-colonial migrant justice organizers, we struggle for
the right to remain, the freedom to move, and the right to return. We
envision and actively strive for 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.

No One Is Illegal, Status for All People!
www.nooneisillegal.org



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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.

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-- 
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