Number of temporary foreign workers tripled in Canada between 2002 and 2012

The number of foreign workers in Canada tripled between 2002 and 2012 — although they still made up less than two per cent of the overall labour force, the parliamentary budget office reported Thursday.

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http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/number-of-temporary-foreign-workers-tripled-in-canada-between-2002-and-2012-1.2276261

Canada Is Spending Millions Keeping Immigration Detainees in Jail

“Today is Family Day—I miss my dad,” said Melika Mojarrab, the teenage daughter of Masoud Hajivand, who has been detained in Lindsay for the past eight months while the government attempts to deport him to Iran. Hajivand, who publicly converted to Christianity from Islam, says he fears imprisonment, torture, or even death if he returns to Iran. “If Canada deports him to Iran, I will not be able to see him again,” Mojarrab said. “His life is in extreme danger.”

Read more:
http://www.vice.com/read/no-crime-no-problem-canada-is-spending-millions-keeping-immigration-detainees-in-jail-786

Supreme Court Ruling Could Alter Landscape for Refugee Advocates

Every day Francisco Rico, co-director of the FJC Refugee Centre in Toronto, gets calls from undocumented migrants wondering how to get to Canada. Some have tracked his organization down on the Internet; others heard about it through friends. Their constant refrain: ‘We want to come to Canada and we don’t have any papers.’ But in offering advice, he could be committing a crime under a controversial section of the 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that critics say is written far too broadly and puts people who legitimately help refugees at risk of prosecution.

Read more:
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/03/14/supreme-court-ruling-could-alter-landscape-for-refugee-advocates.html

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www.no4and4.tumblr.com

As of April 1st, 2015, all low-waged migrant workers employed under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program and Live-In Caregiver / Caregiver Program who have worked in Canada for more than four years will be banned from continuing to work in Canada and forced to leave. They will also be barred from returning to Canada as workers for a further four years. Those that choose to stay will become undocumented.

We have endorsed the call from Campaign Against the 4 Year Limit on Migrant Workers to stop this unjust law, and ensure permanent residency on arrival for migrant workers.

Please sign and share this petition: www.change.org/p/stop-the-mass-deportation-of-thousands-of-immigrants-on-april-1st

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https://www.facebook.com/TransportationNotDeportation/photos/a.688408404606070.1073741827.682835978496646/717329341713976/?type=1&theater

“This afternoon, Transit Police informed representatives of the Transportation not Deportation campaign that they will terminate their Memorandum of Understanding with CBSA, that officers must receive permission from a Watch Commander to initiate contact with CBSA, and that they will not detain people without warrants for items that are simply contravention of immigration law,” confirms Omar Chu of Transportation not Deportation.

Since 2007, Transit Police and the Pacific Region Enforcement Center of CBSA have had a Memorandum of Understanding. Transit Police reported three hundred and twenty eight people to Canada Border Services Agency in 2013, one in five of whom faced a subsequent immigration investigation including deportation. Only 1.5% of all those referred to CBSA even had immigration warrants out. From November 2012 to January 2013, Transit police made had more referrals to CBSA than any other BC police force including the VPD and RCMP.

One of these people was Mexican migrant and hotel worker Lucia Vega Jiménez, who later committed suicide while in CBSA custody. At the coroner’s inquest into her death, a Transit Police officer testified that he turned Lucia over to Canada Border Services Agency, in part, because Lucia had an accent and that he believed “she wasn’t originally from Canada.”

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VIDEO: “Guantánamo of the Pacific”: Australian Asylum Seekers Wage Hunger Strike at Offshore Detention Site

A massive hunger strike is underway at what some are calling “the Guantánamo Bay of the Pacific.” TSome have barricaded themselves behind the detention center’s high wire fences; others have resorted to increasingly drastic measures such as drinking washing detergent, swallowing razor blades, and even sewing their mouths shut to protest their confinement.

Watch Democracy Now video here: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/22/guantanamo_of_the_pacific_australian_asylum

Are you already violating the feds’ new anti-terror bill?

Harper introduced Bill C-51, a sweeping piece of legislation that covers everything from what you’re allowed to say and write to who can board a plane, what happens to your tax information and how long you can be detained without charge.

 http://globalnews.ca/news/1803553/are-you-already-violating-the-feds-new-anti-terror-bill/

My call from a former hunger striker inside the Lindsay Superjail

In recent months I’ve been receiving collect calls from a man who’s being held at the Central East Correctional Centre, also known as the Lindsay Superjail. He’s one of about 200 immigration detainees who began hunger strikes at the jail in September 2013 to protest lengthy detentions and seemingly endless immigration hearings. More than a year later, many of them are still in a maximum-security purgatory that sounds like hell on earth.

https://nowtoronto.com/news/my-call-from-a-former-hunger-striker-inside-the-lindsay-supe/

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