by Jonny Wakefield
Members of a protest camp who have blocked Site C dam construction for 50 days will have a hearing on an injunction to remove them Feb. 22.
It’s the first time BC Hydro and Rocky Mountain Fort campers have been in court since the camp was established Dec. 31.
It comes just days after 26 other refugees drowned trying to make the same journey from Turkey to Greece.
Ema O’Connor BuzzFeed News Reporter
http://www.buzzfeed.com/emaoconnor/hundreds-refugees-drown-at-ses-in-2016#.gpNW00pA3k
At least 39 migrants from the Middle East, including at least five children, drowned Saturday trying to cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece, Turkish coastguard officials said. More than 60 others were rescued from the seas.
Officials told the local Andalou news agency that they expected the death toll to rise as they continued to search the capsized boat and nearby shores.
The boat was headed for Lesbos, a Greek island close to Turkey’s coastline.
Pictures from the scene showed the bodies of children and adults lying motionless on the rocky Turkish coastline, as officials worked to load them into bags.
by Damien Gayle
More than 52,000 crossed in January, says IOM, as Merkel defends open-door policy and says most refugees will eventually return home
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/30/refugee-arrivals-greece-exceed-52000-january
More than 52,000 refugees and migrants crossed the eastern Mediterranean to reach Europe in the first four weeks of January, more than 35 times as many as attempted the crossing in the same period last year.
The daily average number of people making the crossing is nearly equivalent to the total number for the whole month of January as recently as two years ago, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
More than 250 people have died attempting to make the crossing this month, including at least 39 who drowned in the Aegean Sea on Saturday morning after their boat capsized between Turkey and Greece.
Turkish coastguards rescued 75 others from the sea near the resort of Ayvacik on Saturday, according to the Anadolou news agency. They had been trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.
» click here to continue reading
by Travis Lupick
http://www.straight.com/news/614931/cbsa-enforcement-against-immigrants-rise-bc
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) immigration-enforcement activities conducted in B.C. have intensified this year, an analysis of regional department data suggests.
CBSA recently supplied the Straight with statistics for the last two fiscal years (which run from April to March) plus the last nine months of 2015. Based on that data, the Straight estimates that CBSA Pacific region officers will have initiated 2,210 immigration investigations by March 31, 2016. That’s up from 1,843 during the previous fiscal year and 2,060 for 2013-14.
Hugh Adami – Ottawa Citizen
Bhavna Bajaj waited three years for the moment, and when it finally arrived Thursday afternoon at Ottawa International Airport, the sheer joy of having her little boy in her arms brought the perfect ending to a long heartbreak.
Bajaj says there were tears, laughter, hugs and kisses after she was taken from the general arrivals area to the closed-off Customs section to greet her four-year-old son, Daksh Sood, who had just stepped off a plane with his father, Aman Sood. Sood travelled to India in early December to visit his son, whom he had not seen since they were separated. While in India, Sood could not have imagined the developments that would come just before Christmas, involving Immigration Minister John McCallum, that allowed the boy to be reunited with his parents in Canada.
What was a long, unnecessary and inhumane separation, first reported by The Public Citizen on Dec. 26, 2014, stemmed from the couple’s failure to disclose they had a son before they landed in Montreal on Jan. 28, 2013. Daksh was born before their initial application for permanent residency. The couple, approved as permanent residents under the skilled workers category after the boy was born, had left Daksh behind in India with his paternal grandparents and had planned to sponsor him once they were settled here. It turned into a nightmare.
