The four demands of Solidarity Across Borders

Solidarity Across Borders : RESISTING THE WAR ON IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES
NO TO DEPORTATIONS! NO TO DETENTIONS!
FOR THE ABOLITION OF SECURITY CERTIFICATES!
A STATUS FOR ALL!

In addition to the specific demands of each group comprising Solidarity Across Borders, the network maintains four principal demands: 1) The regularization of all non-status persons ;
2) An end to deportations ;
3) An end to the detention of migrants, immigrants and refugees ;
4) The abolition of security certificates.

The Regularization of non-status peoples :

Regularization calls for the recognition and affirmation of the rights and status of people residing in Canada without citizenship or other legal standing.

There are as many as 200 000 people living and working without legal status in Canada today. A person becomes non-status when their immigration application is rejected, or when their temporary visa or work permit has expired. Immigration Canada helps create this invisible class of irregulars. By selectively importing laborers and constructing a highly discretionary state bureaucracy to process refugee and residential claims, Canada produces an ‘illegal’ population - thousands upon thousands of individuals and families who live in poverty, insecurity and fear while seeking work at the bottom of the economic food chain.

NO ONE IS ILLEGAL !

Since 2001, the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act has exacerbated the systematic racism, discriminatory criteria and arbitrary decision-making of Immigration Canada, creating more obstacles for people to qualify as refugees and permanent residents. Additionally, the asylum procedure for refugees lacks an appeal process, and bureaucracy has created an enormous backlog. Yet, day by day, this growing underclass of exploited clandestine workers, deprived of all rights, fuels the Canadian economy.

Many non-status people survive in Canada for years, establishing roots and forming families. The children of non-status persons, even when born in Canada, are often denied their basic rights to adequate and affordable healthcare services, governmental family assistance programs, and education. Families live in fear, stress and despair and people suffer dangerous
and unhealthy working conditions with no recourse to justice.

REGULARIZATION IS A SOCIAL JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE!

Canada has implemented mass regularization programs on various occasions since 1960. In 1973, Canada regularized 39,000 non-status people, primarily draft dodgers from the United States. In 2002, the Action Committee for Non-Status Algerians won a regularization program whereby 83% of the 1000 non-status Algerian families and individuals residing in Quebec gained access to permanent residency. Many of these families had been living here for over 10 years.

A comprehensive and inclusive regularization program should be based on the 12 principles drafted and approved at the Status Conference held in Toronto in November 2004, attended by dozens of groups from throughout Canada, including Solidarity Across Borders.

These 12 principles stress that a regularization program must be "comprehensive, transparent, inclusive and ongoing" and should not exclude groups on grounds traditionally used to discriminate in Canadian immigration law, such as: race, color, faith, disability, sexual orientation, or medical condition; poverty, unemployment or inability to pay fees; receipt of government assistance; or possession of a criminal record, especially resulting from minor infractions or civil disobedience.

Read about all the 12 principles for a Regularization Program.

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End to deportations :

The deportation industry is highly privatized and very lucrative. Every day, many major airline companies, including Air Canada, KLM, Air France and British Airways, make money by deporting human beings - governments look for cheap solutions by relying on deportation deals with aviation companies. Often, deported individuals and families are handcuffed; at times, they are drugged.

The "safe third country" agreement, implemented on December 29, 2004, encourages the immediate rejection of any refugee claimant who enters Canada via the United States; they are then detained in U.S. jails until their deportation. Refugees attempting to enter Canada from the U.S. account for up to 40% of all claims. Instead of providing a fair hearing to refugee claimants, the Immigration Refugee Board acts as a confrontational tribunal, populated by judges notorious - sometimes even censured - for their incompetence, political partisanship, and/or corruption.

The new refugee determination system under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act has no appeal process for a rejected claim, though the government had promised implementation of the Refugee Appeal by June 2003. Meanwhile, all the other avenues - such as the Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA) process - are deeply flawed. Over 97% of refugees are unable to obtain a positive PRRA decision and refugees can be deported while waiting for a decision on a pending Humanitarian and Compassionate claim.

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End to detentions :

Approximately 400 people, including children, infants and pregnant women, are held in Canada's immigration detention centers without charge for indefinite periods of time. The majority of these detainees are fleeing war, misery and persecution, having risked the dehumanization and dangers of migration. Detention is an integral part of Canada's racist immigration regime, which criminalizes people for who they are rather than for any act they commit.

Detention is arbitrary. Border guards have total discretion to throw people in jail for not having valid identity documents or by claiming suspicion that the newcomer is a flight risk. The Immigration Prevention Center in Laval and the Rivière-des-Prairies maximum security prison are two such detention centers for migrants arriving in Montreal.

Many are denied bail, and there is minimal access to legal and translation services, hindering the ability to properly complete forms required for status applications, all of which have very short and strict deadlines. Lawyers and unscrupulous immigration ‘consultants’ often do not bother to fill out these forms correctly either.

Important to note is that Canadian security concerns are more than adequately taken care of by criminal law. There is no need or justification for imprisoning people under immigration law.

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Abolition of Security Certificates :

A measure of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, Security Certificates allow the government to detain non-citizens without charge, under secret evidence, for years. The detainee faces deportation on the basis of broad and vague allegations that they are not permitted to fight in a fair trial. A judge reviews the certificate, but only to see if it is reasonable, not whether the allegations are actually true. The detainee and his lawyer are not allowed to see the evidence; hearsay, evidence extracted under torture or plea-bargains is permitted; cross-examination of informants has not been allowed. There is no appeal. The government has taken the position in four of the current cases that the detainees should be deported even if they face torture. All of the men currently under an (in)security certificate face torture if they are forced to return to their birth-countries, in some cases because of the widely-publicized and hysterical allegations that have been made against them in Canada.

The security certificate, in its present form, has been used to trample on the dignity and fundamental rights of refugees and immigrants since 1991. Since 9/11, the use of security certificates has helped to fuel an atmosphere of racist paranoia that is oppressing Muslim, Arab and migrant communities in Canada and justifying foreign policy.

WAR ON TERROR - IMMIGRATION AS NATIONAL SECURITY

On the heels of September 11th, the government presented their $280-million Anti-Terrorism Plan, which included the infamous Anti-Terrorist Act Bill C-36) aimed to quickly tighten controls and increase enforcement. Immigration was cast as a national security priority. The Immigration Minister received $49-million for a five-part security strategy :

* fast-tracking the permanent resident biometric card for new immigrants ;
* front-end security screening of refugee claimants ;
* increased detention capacity ;
* increased deportation activity ;
* 100 new staff to enforce upgraded security at Ports of Entry.

These measures have led to increased and blatant human rights abuses and racial profiling, as in the case of Maher Arar. Detention and deportation now fall under the newly-formed Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, in charge of enforcing Canada's domestic component of the so-called war on terror.

Canada’s immigration regime is a system built on stolen land, on exclusion and displacement of indigenous peoples, and on detention and deportation of migrants. Its purpose is to prevent and control the movement of people, denying their right to decide for themselves where they wish to live and work, and subjugating entire classes of people to the interests of the business elite.

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