Sunday, October 11 at 2:00pm
YWCA 733 Beatty Street (near Stadium Skytrain)
https://www.facebook.com/events/1501359490156546/
As part of 10 Days for Refugees Welcome (RefugeesWelcome.ca), No One Is Illegal-Vancouver – unceded Coast Salish Territories invites you to a panel discussion on what it means to be a refugee in Canada.
We assert Refugees Welcome! Freedom to move, stay and return.
IN VANCOUVER, COAST SALISH TERRITORIES
Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh lands
September 6, 2015, 2pm. Vancouver Art Gallery (Robson side)
https://www.facebook.com/events/1703064886579884/permalink/1703307339888972/
With images and stories in the media on the migrant crisis from Syria and the surrounding areas, the deaths of the Aylan, Galip and Rehan Kurdi has shone a light on the complicity of the Canadian governments, itscorporations and allies in this crisis. Thousands of Eritrean, Somali, Syrian, Yemeni, and Balkan refugees are dying on the shores of Fortress Europe; as Latin Americans have died enroute to the United States of America.
Due to discriminatory restrictions implemented by the federal government, the number of refugee claims in Canada decreased by 50 percent and the number of accepted refugees dropped by 30 percent between 2006 and 2012. These laws and policies have caused untold misery and death. In Canada today, citizenship is harder to get, and easier to lose. Most racialized and poor migrants can only come here as short-term migrant workers, easily deported. Thousands of migrant workers and undocumented people have died after being denied services in Canada or been deported or repatriated after being injured to their death. Read more about Canadian immigraton policies at www.neverhome.ca
The Canadian government in alliance with resource-extractive corporations along with their European and American partners have been profiting from the wars, environmental collapse and economic depressions of many countries in the South resulting in over 52 million displaced people around the globe.
At the same time, communities are rising up across the globe. In Germany and Iceland, tens of thousands of people have forced open the borders, and opened their homes to refugees. It’s time for us to do the same.
Sep 4-9: Cross-country mobilizations
Ajax, Calgary, London, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, Saskatoon, St. Catharines, St John’s, Toronto, Vancouver Coast Salish Territories, Victoria, Winnipeg
– see below for details on each
Thursday, September 10 at 7:00pm – 11:00pm in PDT
Wise Hall, 1882 Adanac Street,
Unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil Waututh Territories
Opening by CHRISTIE LEE CHARLES
RUP SIDHU
JILLIAN CHRISTMAS
JB THE FIRST LADY
KIMMORTAL
& in from Seattle! ABYSSINIAN CREOLE
Tickets: http://frontlines.bpt.me/
Print the poster and put it up somewhere
Poster_Unist’ot’en_fundraiser_2015_Print
It’s official – second class citizenship goes into effect
Last Friday, part of Bill C-24 went into effect, officially creating a two-tier citizenship system. As a result of this new law, dual citizens and people who have immigrated to Canada can have their citizenship taken away while other Canadians cannot. The government’s press release last week tried to justify this discriminatory law by raising the threat of “jihadi terrorism,” but Bill C-24 could easily be used against non-terrorists—for example, a journalist who is convicted of a “terrorism offence” in another country for reporting on human rights violations by the government.
Read more: https://bccla.org/2015/06/its-official-second-class-citizenship-goes-into-effect/
Hundreds make final bids to stay in Canada after deportation hold lifted
Mr. Lafleur is one of 3,500 people in Canada – 3,200 Haitians and 300 Zimbabweans – who were affected when the federal government lifted a hold on deportations to their home countries in December, deeming the situation in Haiti and Zimbabwe to be stable. Those without status were given six months to apply for residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
New Tory legislation will force deportation of foreign criminals and strip them of refugee protection
The government’s plans is to change several acts to make it easier and faster to remove non-Canadian criminals out of Canada, including some who have already been accorded refugee protection and permanent residency status, he said.
https://nacla.org/blog/2015/04/23/how-human-rights-organizations-are-implicated-migrant-deaths
by Joseph Nevins
The deaths of unauthorized migrants have long scarred the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. But as evidenced by a single incident on Sunday, April 19, the Mediterranean is the global epicenter of such fatalities.
An estimated 850 migrants—from a variety of countries, including Eritrea, Syria, Sierra Leone, and Bangladesh— perished when their less-than-seaworthy vessel capsized in the waters between Libya and the Italian island of Lampedusa. According to one report, “authorities described a grisly scene of bodies floating and sinking in the warm waters, with the majority of the dead apparently trapped in the ship at the bottom of the sea.â€
In response, Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, borrowed a page from the talking points of U.S. authorities by pointing the finger at migrant smugglers. Using words that obscure how the growing strength of the European Union’s border policing apparatus—what many call “Fortress Europeâ€â€”effectively requires migrants to rely on professional smugglers and take ever-riskier routes to reach their hoped-for destinations, Renzi called smugglers “the slave drivers of the 21st century.â€
It is hardly surprising that officials charged with policing national territorial boundaries do not indict the very system that kills migrants: the nation-state and its associated apparatus of exclusion for those deemed undesirable or unworthy. In the case of international human rights organizations, however, one can and should expect much better. Instead, one gets (at best) handwringing and calls for governments to make greater efforts to rescue endangered migrants. Meanwhile, these same organizations uphold and legitimize the very practices that make migrant fatalities inevitable, and thus help reproduce them.
