Our work is carried out through public awareness events, direct support work with refugees and Indigenous communities, multilingual community forums, facilitating workshops, ongoing campaigns and projects, creative resistance, and actions to resist the ongoing injustices of this system.

* Over 2011-2014, we will be focusing our organizing on the following campaigns and projects:

1) People v. Jason Kenney Campaign

2) “Inheriting Resistance” A Community History Project

3) Popular Education, Creative Resistance, and Movement Building

4) Indigenous solidarity and Refugee Support

* Photos, Videos and Overview of Year 2010 In Review here (Anti Olympic and G8 mobilizing, Tamil Refugee Support, People v. Kenney, Indigenous Solidarity, and Movement Building)

* Eleven No One Is Illegal Highlights from 2011 here

* Highlights of No One Is Illegal Vancouver Coast Salish Territories since 2004:

Popular Education: We organize regular educationals such as films, panels, and cultural events on post 911 security culture, refugee process, non-status experiences, historic redress, solidarity between migrant and indigenous struggles, environmental justice, globalization, war and occupation etc. We offer migrant justice and anti-racism workshops and regularly produce factsheets and zines including “Razorwire”. We also take action through rallies, press conferences, and delegations on issues such as refugee detention, Indigenous land-defense, anti terror legislation, immigration raids, racism, and more. You can get more information on these events, by clicking here.

Movement Building: No One Is Illegal has played a critical role in social justice movement-building locally and nationally. We have co-founded the following coalitions in Vancouver: Land Freedom Decolonization Coalition, STATUS Anti-Imperialist coalition, Vancouver Anti-Racism Network, Olympic Resistance Network and we are also active in anti-war, Indigenous self-determination, Palestine solidarity, and Downtown Eastside anti-poverty efforts.

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 have been turned into a series of widely disseminated popular education posters.  We also colloborated with the community-based theatre group Neworld Theatre to host free popular theatre workshops and the Migration Storytelling Project featuring young racialized immigrants in “Storytelling our Lives”.

Long-term Projects:  We are excited to launch Inheriting Resistance, a community history project to document the oral histories of social justice movements in Vancouver. We have also been 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.

Anti detention/deportation supportwork: We organize tangible advocacy to defend those in the refugee determination process by doing politically conscious support work- for example by drafting legal submissions, organizing multilingual community forums, providing training workshops, and fighting back through direct actions at immigration offices. We have successfully fought deportations and detentions – including the unprecedented airport blockade to prevent the deportation of Laibar Singh– but have also seen our family members and friends removed, detained, forced underground or forced into sanctuary. Our ongoing direct support work, although not often visible, is a central and critical part of our work. To read more, 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 and St’atimc community at Sutikalh as they resist destruction of their land by resort development through public forums, blockade support, fundraising,  and campaigns to target investors; offering tangible court support for the Tahltan and Cheam and Wetsuweten blockades; and solidarity actions in support of Six Nations and Tyendinaga. To read more on indigenous resistance struggles that we support, please click here.

Campaigns: Over the years we have coordinated and participated in a number of local and national campaigns including:

– People v. Jason Kenney is an ongoing campaign to raise awareness and take action against Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Over the past three years we have confronted Kenney and disseminated multilingual popular educational materials.

– Release Detained Tamil Refugees. As part of our “Let them Free, Let them Stay” campaign for the over 500 Tamil refugees aboard MV Ocean Lady and MV Sun Sea, we countered racist misinformation in the media through press releases and factsheets and posters, organized several national days of action, produced legal resource guides for detainees, and held weekly rallies at the detention centre.

– No Olympics on Stolen Native Land. Part of a local and national network to oppose and disrupt the 2010 Winter Olympics and its negative impacts including environmental degradation, homelessness, theft of Indigenous lands, exploitation of migrant labour, increased privatization & public debt, and state criminalization of dissent.

– Scrap Immigration Bill C-50. The first in a series of campaigns to oppose Conservative immigration policy. Under Bill C-50, sweeping changes gave enormous and arbitrary powers to the Minister. Despite enormous resistance, public and political pressure, and national actions by NOII, this bill passed with Liberal Party support.

– Regularization: Status for All building the groundwork for the regularization of all non-status people.

– Abolish Security Certificates: As part of a national campaign, we disseminated public information, organized media campaigns and actions, and made submissions to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Due to the immense grassroots public support across Canada in the past five years, 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.

– Scrap the SPP. This NAFTA-plus-Homeland Security agreement between Bush, Harper, and Calderon in 2005 has escaped any public scrutiny. In 2007, we raised awareness, targeted corporations, and coordinated a continental day of action. As part of cross-country campaigning, the SPP was largely forced off the table.

– Justice for those in Sanctuary: There has been a revival in the sanctuary movement for refugees. Supporters have been willing to defy their governments in order to protect refugees and prevent their forced deportations. Across the country, NOII has played a central role in supporting those in sanctuary and winning status!

– Restore Legal Aid for Refugees in B.C: As a result of massive pressure against a wide array of cuts (including to social assistance, women’s centres, family law etc), the government restored partial funding to refugee legal aid in 2004.

– Time is Up for the Minutemen: A successful campaign in 2005 to oppose the Minutemen Project, a border vigilante group, on the U.S./Canadian border.