Saturday 10 March 2012. Independent

Israel is to begin construction soon on a vast detention facility in the Negev desert to house the thousands of immigrants that cross illegally into Israel from Egypt every year. Human rights groups fear that the detention centre, the largest of its kind in the world, with a capacity to hold 8,000 migrants, will turn into a festering refugee camp, and deprive those escaping persecution at home of their rights to seek asylum in Israel. The project was approved by Israel’s right-wing government 18 months ago, but many Israelis are uncomfortable about spurning asylum seekers from war-torn African countries given their own history as a nation of refugees.

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Statement endorsed by No One Is Illegal Halifax, No One Is Illegal Toronto, and No One Is Illegal Vancouver Coast Salish Territories

Last week Minister of Censorship and Deportation Jason Kenney tabled Bill C-31, an omnibus Refugee Exclusion Act. This Act is racist.  It creates a two-tier system of refugee protection, increases incarceration, denies and revokes legal status, and violently targets and expels refugees and migrants from Canada.

Under the proposed Refugee Exclusion Act, the following provisions will be established:

– Conditional residency for accepted refugees: Asylum seekers who have already been accepted as refugees and have acquired permanent residency but not Canadian citizenship risk losing their status. If the Minister determines that certain refugees no longer need protection, their residency status can be revoked and they will face deportation even after having lived in Canada for years. This abolishes refugee protection and permanent status for refugees. Instead, it introduces the dangerous concept of conditional residence for refugees, whose lives are already marked by trauma, precarity, and instability. This bill also grants the state the right to retroactively strip refugees of their status.

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Rabble.ca By Matthew Behrens | February 21, 2012

Most Canadians would shudder at the thought of women being shackled to their hospital beds after giving birth. Yet that is exactly what happens to a specific class of women who, having come to Canada seeking safety, are detained even though they pose no threat to the public. Detained refugees experience the trauma of being shackled and chained on their journey to and from medical care and during certain procedures in Canadian hospitals, according to a brief presented to the House of Commons last month by McGill University researchers Janet Cleveland, Cécile Rousseau and Rachel Kronick. In addition, they reported many detained refugees forgo health-care visits for fear of being shackled and humiliated.

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By Tom Godfrey ,Toronto Sun Monday, February 20, 2012 01:00 PM EST

Canadian police and border agents are searching for a Chilean man who bolted to freedom at Pearson airport as he was being deported from Canada. A Canada-wide warrant has been issued for the suspect, whose identity has not been released by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

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by Correy Baldwin, This Magazine

On August 13, 2010, a ship full of Tamil migrants arrived on the shores of British Columbia. There were 492 people on board, including 49 children, all seeking asylum after enduring a desperate, four-month voyage on a cramped, unsanitary ship. Even before the boat arrived, the Conservative government labeled occupants as “criminals” and “terrorists.” The ship was a “significant security concern,” and the government called in both the immigration minister and the public safety minister. This was the beginning of an aggressive campaign to rally support for harsh new anti-refugee legislation—a propaganda campaign built on disinformation, misleading rhetoric, disregard for the legal system, and some hefty stoking of public fear and misperceptions.

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