Al Jazeera Fault Lines – Illegal America: Arizona’s immigration fight
Posted by admin on Aug 26th, 2010
Canada’s illiberal turn on asylum
Posted by admin on Aug 23rd, 2010
Populist politicians have seized on the Sun Sea Tamil refugees to ramp up anti-immigrant rhetoric, reneging on human rights. Guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 August 2010
Earlier this month, a boat carrying 492 Tamils claiming to be refugees from Sri Lanka’s recently ended 26-year civil war arrived in Canada on the MV Sun Sea, having set sail two and half months earlier. Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) is now processing the asylum claims of those on board. While the 492 refugee claimants represent only around 2% of Canada’s annual refugee intake, the MV Sun Sea has been taken on as a symbol of the spectre of a refugee influx, notably by the conservative National Post newspaper and Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. A former chair of the IRB has disputed the public safety minister’s claim that smugglers and terrorists were on board the ship.
Updated – Seven myths about the Tamil refugees
Posted by admin on Aug 20th, 2010
By No One Is Illegal-Vancouver | August 20, 2010, rabble.ca
Surviving a dangerous three-month ocean journey, 492 Tamil refugees — including around 60 women and 55 children — arrived in B.C. after fleeing war and persecution in Sri Lanka. When the ship the MV Sun Sea first neared Esquimault on Vancouver Island, the territories of the Songhees First Nation, it was immediately boarded by the Canadian armed forces, border services, and RCMP. As of Wednesday, initial hearings had been completed for about 100 of the migrants. All were ordered to be re-incarcerated in the Fraser Correctional centres and Burnaby Youth detention centre, while officials are confirming their identities. It has been revealed that after seizing the belonging of the migrants into two large U-Hauls, Canadian Border Services Agency failed to keep records to tag the belongings and documents to each individual. This is causing an unnecessary and oppressive delay, and is even more objectionable since same thing happened to the Tamil refugees who arrived last fall on the ship Ocean Lady.
Shameful Behaviour: The Canadian State and Tamil Refugees
Posted by admin on Aug 18th, 2010
By Rachel Avery and Dan Kellar – August 18, 2010
Once again, the approach of a ship carrying refugees has been met by racist hostility and unfounded accusations of terrorism. The arrival of the MV Sun Sea to the shores of Vancouver Island has seen an outpouring of explicitly racist, anti-immigrant discourse throughout Canada. In a country which would like to consider itself a champion of humanitarianism, it should be shocking that the government’s racist treatment of these refugees has been largely met with support and further racism rather than with disgust and protest. The actions of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and the Canada Border Services Agency in response to this situation are abhorrent; these policies must be challenged along with the racism that supports them.
Ottawa plans new rules for boat migrants
Posted by admin on Aug 13th, 2010
John Ibbitson, Steven Chase and Marten Youssef. Globe and Mail. Friday, Aug. 13, 2010 12:34PM EDT
Senior figures within the Conservative government are working to craft new tools that would treat boatloads of illegal immigrants arriving on Canada’s shores differently from other refugee claimants. These plans are being hatched as Canadian authorities Thursday took control of a ship of nearly 500 illegal Tamil immigrants off the west coast of British Columbia – a passenger list the Tories say includes suspected human smugglers and terrorists. The MV Sun Sea was boarded Thursday night just after 9 pm EDT by the Canadian military, the RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency staff. They took control of the ship, which was to be taken to CFB Esquimalt just west of Victoria.
All immigrants face mandatory language test
Posted by admin on Jul 20th, 2010
Tue Jul 20 2010, Toronto Star, Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter
Born and raised in New York, Dodi Robbins graduated from Harvard University and has been practising law for 13 years. Her first language is English. Yet like all other skilled immigrants applying to settle in Canada, the American corporate lawyer must now take a language test to prove her English is good enough to settle here. “I was outraged, insulted and floored,” said Robbins, who obtained her law degree at Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School in New York. A mother of two, she has been working in Toronto on a work permit for four years as compliance and regulations counsel for an international financial services company.
Jason Kenney’s disposable workforce of temporary foreign labour
Posted by admin on Jul 8th, 2010
Jason Kenney’s disposable workforce of temporary foreign labour
By Usman Mushtaq | July 8, 2010, rabble.ca
Using the distraction of police violence against protesters that was on display at the G20 Summit marches in Toronto, the Canadian government once again affirmed their commitment to the movement of people across their borders only as cheap and replaceable labour. On Saturday, June 26, Citizenship and Immigration Canada announced changes to immigration policy that further restrict immigrants from obtaining residency in Canada through permanent and meaningful employment. This change follows a long line of policy changes that are designed to bring in more temporary migrants while restricting those and other migrants from having safe employment and a chance to obtain permanent residency in Canada.
Win for war resisters
Posted by admin on Jul 8th, 2010
Thu Jul 08 2010, Toronto Star
Parliament has voted twice to let Iraq war resisters from the United States stay in Canada. Now the Federal Court of Appeal has added its voice to the debate. On Tuesday, the court ruled that Jeremy Hinzman, an asylum-seeking American paratrooper and conscientious objector, should have another chance at remaining in Toronto, where he has settled with his wife, son and baby daughter. The court found that an immigration officer’s 2008 decision to deny Hinzman’s application for permanent residence in Canada was “unreasonable” and “significantly flawed” because it didn’t take into account his pacifist religious beliefs.
Australian elections 2010: a festival of cruelty towards refugees?
Posted by admin on Apr 7th, 2010
Jay Fletcher, April 7, 2010, Socialist Alliance
As the Coalition strives to make “border control” a vote-changing issue and the Rudd government continues to claim its approach is best at keeping the “people smugglers” and the “queue-jumpers” under control, do we face the dark prospect of another refugee-bashing federal election? As things stand, it looks likely. Labor agrees with the Coalition that asylum seeker boats reaching Australian waters pose a genuine problem of national security. So why wouldn’t Tony Abbott and Co. maintain their current offensive about the “unprecedented flood of illegal arrivals” up until election time?
Opposition: Tories responsible for refugee backlog
Posted by admin on Apr 7th, 2010
By ELIZABETH THOMPSON, April 7, 2010 6:49pm
OTTAWA — The percentage of refugee claims processed each year has dropped dramatically since the Conservatives came to power, setting the stage for the government’s new refugee reform, says Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis. “They created a crisis and the (backlog) numbers went up and when the numbers went up then they said they had to fix it.” However, Alykhan Velshi, spokesman for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, says the government inherited a broken system and introduced its reform because Band-Aid solutions will no longer work.
