Within our collective, we are predominantly from immigrant/refugee background and we take leadership from our particular perspectives, experiences, and histories confronting this colonial regime. We also take leadership from those whom we work in direct solidarity with- those facing detention and deportation and those communities fighting for indigenous sovereignty- and as such, recognize that we also function to offer tangible support such as court support, media and public awareness, and rallies and delegations.

Our work is carried out through public awareness events, direct refugee support work, multilingual community forums, coordinating letter writing campaigns, facilitating workshops, ongoing campaigns and projects, and action to resist the ongoing injustices of this system.

Popular Education: We organize monthly educational events such as films, panels, and cultural events on issues such as post 911 security culture, the refugee process, non-status experiences, historic resistance against Immigration Canada, solidarity between migrant and indigenous struggles, globalization, occupation and displacement, and much more. We also take action through rallies, press conferences, and delegations on issues such as immigrant roundups, turnback policies, arming of border guards, the Minutemen, airport delegations, detention center actions and more.

* You can get more information on these events, by clicking here. 

We recently initiated “Razorwire” a quarterly newsletter with an initial distribution of 1500 copies across Canada. We also offer anti-oppression and migrant justice resources through comprehensive workshops.

* For more information on getting a copy of Razorwire or setting up a workshop, please click here.

Campaigns: We have several ongoing campaigns at the local and national level: Regularization: Status for All; Repeal Safe Third Country Agreement; Restore Legal Aid for Refugees in B.C; Time is Up for the Minutemen; Justice for those in Sanctuary; Abolish Security Certificates; and Scrap the SPP. Some examples of our work within these campaigns include:

o No One is Illegal and grassroots organizers across the country have been working to build the groundwork for a national campaign for the regularization of all non-status people through our 12 principles of regularization.

o At the provincial level in 2003, we launched a campaign to restore legal aid for refugees, which the provincial government cut to $0. As a result of massive public and political pressure provincially against the wide array of provincial government cuts (including to social assistance rates, women’s centres, family law legal aid etc), the provincial government restored partial funding to refugee legal aid in 2004.

o We are part of a national campaign advocating for the Abolition of Security Certificates. We have disseminated a large amount of public information, organized media campaigns, made submissions to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and organized countless public actions. Due to the immense public support that has been generated for the campaign across Canada in the past three years as a result of grassroots campaigning, major victories have been won including release of four of the men from custody and a constitutional victory at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2007.

o We have recently launched a campaign to oppose the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP), as part of a growing movement of resistance to this secret agreement between Bush, Harper, and Calderon in 2005. This NAFTA-plus-Homeland Security agreement has escaped any public scrutiny and will never be debated in the House of Commons, yet will continue an agenda of corporate free trade, border militarization, privatization and theft of indigenous land and resources, repression in the name of national security, impoverishment and displacement, and cooperation in war and occupation. As part of this campaign, we are actively raising awareness on this issue while targeting the corporations within the North American Competitiveness Council- the major corporate lobby behind the SPP.

* To read more on various policies, processes, and campaigns related to the struggle for (im)migrant/refugee justice, please click here. 

Migration and Poverty Project: We are also in the midst of a long-term Migration and Poverty educational project, documenting how concrete policies such as immigration law, labour standards, and social assistance regulations, deepen migrant poverty within Canada. This project will be based on quantitative research as well as extensive community organizing within diverse migrant communities. This 3-year Project aims to highlight the realities of immigrant poverty in Canada, economic inequalities in the labour market, and the particular lack of access to social services and social assistance that refugees and non-status communities face given their precarious legal status. The Project will be framed within an overall analysis of how racism and colonialism, Euro-centric and individualistic constructions of poverty, and the structuring of the global political economy exacerbate the marginalization of migrants.

Creative resistance: We believe strongly that art and creativity are empowering ways through which to present our messages and consistently aim to involve creative artistic resistance into our work. The People’s History of Kanada Poster Project is a collective collaboration with 10 socially conscious artists to produce art that will subsequently be turned into a series of widely disseminated popular education posters. The Project highlights the voices of racialized and indigenous artists whose histories of racism, colonization, occupation, displacement, and exile are the foundational themes of the Project. We are also beginning an exciting collaboration with a local social justice and community-based theatre group to develop more effective public intervention skits and street theatre. We believe in bridging the gap between art and activism and in developing tools of artistic resistance that are less individualistic and professionalized, and more deeply rooted in community social movements.

Anti detention/deportation supportwork: Meanwhile, we also organize tangible political and legal advocacy to defend families and individuals in the refugee determination process on an ongoing basis by doing politically conscious support work- for example by drafting legal submissions, organizing multilingual community forums, providing training workshops and facilitating spaces for those directly affected to empower themselves through the process, and fighting back through direct actions at immigration offices against deportations. In the past few years, we have written hundreds of letters, collected thousands of signatures, and organized dozens of demonstrations. We have successfully fought deportations and detentions, but have also seen our family members and friends removed, detained, forced underground or forced into sanctuary. We believe it is imperative to concretely offer support to those at the frontlines of repressive immigration policies and to build our communities own capacity for resistance and self-organization; therefore our ongoing direct support work, although not often visible, is a central and critical part of our work.

* To read more on ongoing supportwork, please click here.

Indigenous solidarity: We also believe it is crucial for our racialized migrant communities to build stronger links with indigenous communities, and therefore we have worked extensively on building alliances with and supporting indigenous sisters and brothers also fighting racism, colonialism, theft of land, and displacement. This has included for example, standing in support of the Secwepemc people as they resist destruction of their land by Sun Peaks Resort through public forums, prison support, and a campaign to target Delta Hotels locally; offering tangible court support for the Tahltan nation’s blockades; and solidarity actions and fundraising in support of the Six Nations community.

* To read more on indigenous resistance struggles that we support, please click here.