“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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By Julio Salgado, Briarpatch, May 6 2011

When officers of the Tucson, Arizona, police department walked into Senator John McCain’s local office last May to detain Yahaira Carrillo, Mohammad Abdollahi and Lizbeth Mateo for trespassing, the three activists were given the option of either walking out on their own or being handcuffed. They chose the former. The three undocumented youth had spent nearly a decade fighting for the passage of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would have given young people like them a path to citizenship via post-secondary education or the military. Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate failed to pass the bill last December. But the movement that’s been sparked by these young activists is bridging formerly disparate communities and drawing out many voices that were previously silenced.

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By Kim Willsher, Los Angeles Times, May 4 2011

Reporting from Paris— Tunisian migrants have occupied a Paris building deemed unsafe, refusing pleas to leave and offers of alternative housing Tuesday. The 130 migrants, calling themselves the Lampedusa Tunisian Collective, are mostly young adults and minors. Many say they fled instability in their homeland, where the so-called jasmine revolution overthrew longtime leader Zine el Abidine ben Ali in January.

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Yasmine Ryan, Al Jazeera, Apr. 28 2011

Human rights groups have questioned the legality of the French police’s arrests of migrants from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. French police said they carried out the latest round of arrests on Wednesday night, detaining immigrants who were sleeping rough in parks in Paris and Marseille and drawing condemnation from rights groups.

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The special issue on No Borders As Practical Politics has finally come out in the Canadian journal *Refuge*

You can access the entire issue here

Table of Contents

Editorial

A Note from the Editor
Sharry J. Aiken

Introduction
Editorial: Why No Borders?
Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma, Cynthia Wright

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