“We are the wrong people of / the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what / in the hell is everybody being reasonable about… but let this be unmistakable this poem is not consent / I do not consent” – Poet June Jordan

No One Is Illegal Vancouver Coast Salish Territories is an anti-colonial migrant justice collective. We are writing this statement only two weeks into the recent federal election, where Stephen Harper’s Conservatives attained a majority in Parliament. We understand that the whole electoral system is flawed – from the façade of choice in liberal democracies to the illegitimacy of the Canadian state that occupies Indigenous lands. We do not simply advocate for “better” politicians or laws. Nonetheless, the specific context of the Conservative government, who have been in power since 2006, requires us to analyze our strategies and our struggles accordingly.

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Guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 May 2011 22.28 BST

European nations moved to reverse decades of unfettered travel across the continent when a majority of EU governments agreed the need to reinstate national passport controls amid fears of a flood of immigrants fleeing the upheaval in north Africa. In a serious blow to one of the cornerstones of a united, integrated Europe, EU interior ministers embarked on a radical revision of the passport-free travel regime known as the Schengen system to allow the 26 participating governments to restore border controls. They also agreed to combat immigration by pressing for “readmission accords” with countries in the Middle East and north Africa to send refugees back to where they came from.

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by Channing Kennedy, Colorlines, Apr. 28 2011

Watch the video here

Back in January, we reported on the game Smuggle Truck, a game by Boston-based developers Owlchemy Labs. In Smuggle Truck, the player races an old pickup truck through a desert, attempting to cross the border without letting too many immigrants bounce out of the back. This struck many as unqualified poor taste; media and pop-culture representations of undocumented immigrants are already negatively racially loaded, and inhumane United States immigration policies are responsible for ever-increasing numbers of border-crossing deaths, which reached a record 378 last year.

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By Dana Gabriel, Countercurrents, Apr. 27 2011

With the release of a U.S. Congressional report that found only a small fraction of the border with Canada was being adequately monitored, there is now more focus being placed on the northern border. As a result of increased scrutiny, there are efforts to militarize and expand surveillance on the Canada-U.S. border. The new found attention is also attributed to a proposed trade and security perimeter agreement between the two countries which promotes a shared approach to border management.

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Ian Traynor and John Hooper, The Guardian, Apr. 27 2011

France and Italy have thrown down the gauntlet over Europe’s system of passport-free travel, saying a crisis of immigration sparked by the Arab spring was calling into question the borderless regime enjoyed by more than 400 million people in 25 countries. Challenging one of the biggest achievements of European integration of recent decades, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi also launched a joint effort to stem immigration and demanded European deportation pacts with the countries of revolutionary north Africa to send new arrivals packing.

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