*** April 4 is Refugee Rights Day – YOU can get involved ***

Minister of Censorship and Deportation Jason Kenney has tabled Bill C-31, an omnibus Refugee Exclusion Act. It creates a two-tier system of refugee protection that mandates nationality-based discrimination, mandates incarceration for many asylum seekers, denies and revokes permanent residency for many who have already been granted refugee status, and violently targets and expels refugees and migrants from Canada. This Act also introduces intrusive biometrics data collection on all migrants and gives increased powers of arrest and detention to border guards. This racist and repressive new bill is a major roll-back on an already minimalist and exclusionary refugee system.

Learn more – Joint NOII Statement – Axe the Refugee Exclusion Act:
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/no-one-illegal/2012/03/noii-alert-axe-refugee-exclusion-act

TAKE ACTION:

1) April 4th is Refugee Rights Day. We encourage you to post on your Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites about the Refugee Exclusion Act and migrant justice issues. The mainstream media and even many of us have been silent or unaware about this recent attack on refugee rights, so raising awareness is a critical first step. Tag and post to Jason Kenney, your MP and news channels. Share any and all of the links listed below (scroll down).

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National Release
March 27, 2012

www.nooneisillegal.org
www.facebook.com/NoOneIsIllegalNetwork
www.twitter.com/NoOneIsIllegal

“Conservative Party using No One Is Illegal to distract from anti-migrant record, Refugee Exclusion Act Bill C-31”

Canada, Turtle Island — Immigrant and refugee rights groups from Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver were brought up in Parliament yesterday [1] and targeted in a press release by Minister of Deportation Jason Kenney [2]. The Tories have charged that No One Is Illegal is “not simply another noisy activist group but hard-line anti-Canadian extremists”.

However as Sozan Savehilaghi from No One Is Illegal – Vancouver Coast Salish Territories notes, “It seems as if everyone who is a dissident and stands up for equality and social and environmental justice is an extremist in Harper’s corporate Canada”, referring to Tory government recently targeting Indigenous communities and environmentalists against Enbridge pipeline also as “extremist”‘.

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Toronto Star. Published On Wed Mar 14 2012 Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter

Caught up in the immigration backlog to sponsor her mom and dad to Canada permanently, Emma Canizales was thrilled to learn of Ottawa’s new visa to facilitate her parents’ visits. The so-called Super Visa allows eligible individuals to travel in and out of Canada to visit their family here over a 10-year period — with up to two years for each stay — while their sponsorship applications are processed.

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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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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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