The Facts About Immigration Canada, Monte Solberg and the Conservatives

Photos from the Solberg Action are linked at: gallery.cmaq.net/solbergottawa

[The following is the text of a flyer distributed at the disruption of Immigration Minister Monte Solberg's scheduled speech in Ottawa on May 31, 2006.]

WHY WE’RE PROTESTING?

We are here to directly address Canada's Immigration Minister Monte Solberg.

We come to Ottawa today for all our friends and neighbors who have been deported, detained, forced underground, forced into sanctuary, or victimized by security certificates.

We have learned from experience that struggling for dignity and justice means we must disrupt and be assertive to have our voices meaningfully heard. That often means being impolite.

We are not interested in a false debate; rather, we are making clear and attainable demands, based on the lived reality of the hundreds of thousands of migrants in Canada.

Our main demands include:

1) An immediate moratorium on all deportations by the Canadian government;
2) A commitment to implement a full, inclusive and comprehensive regularization program for all non-status migrants in Canada; meaning STATUS FOR ALL!

We reject any government's attempt to blame migrants for exercising the difficult but understandable choice to leave their homelands, whether to flee persecution, or to seek a better life.

There is no such thing as an “illegal” human being; only unjust laws and illegitimate governments.

With all due respect to the organizers of tonight's event, with whom we share an uncompromising commitment to social justice, we are not interested in a fake dialogue with Minister Solberg. A real dialogue is not possible when one side is responsible for continual injustices, and exercises power over the most exploited.

Immigration Minister Monte Solberg, along with the Public Security Minister Stockwell Day, has overall responsibility for immigration and refugee matters, including deportations. They have worsened the already anti-immigrant policies of the Liberals in their short time in office, and have perpetuated fear and anxiety within migrant communities. We refuse to remain passive, or to be grateful for minor concessions, while listening to the empty words of ceremonial keynote addresses.

That is why we choose to act.

THE FACTS ABOUT IMMIGRATION CANADA, MONTE SOLBERG AND THE CONSERVATIVES

* The Canadian government deports between 10,000 to 12,000 people each year. This is not just a statistic: the people being removed are members of our communities, our families, friends, schoolmates, colleagues and neighbors. During the last election, the Conservatives promised to speed up deportations from Canada.

* On a regular basis, across Canada, the deportation agents of the CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) enter homes, workplaces, shopping malls, subway stations and even schools to detain migrants.

* Under the current Conservative government, CBSA officials have entered primary and secondary schools in Toronto on at least two occasions to detain children. In Montreal, deportation agents have raided carwashes to detain workers, as well as entering buses to check IDs and detain individuals. The net effect of these actions is to create fear and paranoia within immigrant communities.

* Because of the recent actions of the CBSA, diverse groups, including health professionals in Toronto, have called for an immediate moratorium on all deportations.

* Between 200,000 to 500,000 people live in Canada without status. Despite vigorous campaigning to regularize non-status persons, led by self-organized immigrant groups, Immigration Minister Monte Solberg has already publicly rejected the idea of a regularization program. Mimicking former Immigration Minister Joe Volpe, Solberg is playing the game of divide-and-rule, saying that regularization would be unfair to those who “play by the rules” and are waiting in line. Non-status migrants don't want to jump the line, they want a process to get into the so-called line and get status.

* Thousands more migrants are part of exploitive temporary worker programs, like the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), without any hope of permanent residency. There are many migrants workers who have lived the majority of their working lives in Canada but can never receive citizenship. Monte Solberg wants to increase these exploitive temporary programs that are essentially forms of indentured labor.

* The current Conservative government supports the “Safe Third Country Agreement”, which prevents refugee claims from being made by individuals and families who migrate thru the United States by land. This has substantially lowered the number of refugee claims heard by Canada.

* The current Conservative government has upheld racist security certificates, meaning detention without trial, secret evidence and secret trials.

* There are currently nine individuals and families (including children) who are in sanctuary in churches across Canada. Within the last three years, there have been at least six other sanctuary cases (in one case, three school-age children were unable to go outside for almost two years). The sanctuary cases reveal the fundamental structural problems with our refugee determination process (including the lack of an appeal on the merits of a refused refugee claim). Monte Solberg can grant status to all current sanctuary cases now, but has refused

* Both Monte Solberg and Stockwell Day have refused to consider the many pleas to stop other deportations. For example, in Montreal, the Rodriguez family, originally from Guatemala, were deported in early April. All the Rodriguez family asked was that their deportation date be postponed until their children could finish their school term in June. Their simple request was refused.

* Monte Solberg, Stockwell Day (responsible for the CBSA) and the Conservative government are publicly against the implementation of an appeals division at the Immigration and Refugee Board. Currently, no one who makes a refugee claim in Canada can have an appeal heard on the merits of their case (including all the sanctuary cases).

* At any given point in time, there can be as many 400 to 500 migrants (including children) who are detained at immigration detention centers. Migrants who are detained have not committed crimes, but are imprisoned for making the difficult, but understandable, choice to live in Canada without status.

While shrewdly announcing seemingly pro-immigrant measures (such as a cut in the odious landing fee that all permanent residents must pay), the Conservatives have increased spending on border enforcement and police agencies.

The Conservative government openly supports anti-migrant measures like the Safe Third Country Agreement, and campaigned for accelerated deportations, while refusing to consider the implementation of an appeals division at the IRB, let alone a regularization program for all non-status migrants.

The predecessor of the Conservatives, the Reform Party, were infamous for making false links between immigration and crime (and now terrorism) which helped to create a climate that made the anti-immigrant reforms of the Liberal government a reality.

A dialogue with Monte Solberg cannot happen without a reckoning with the full Conservative record -- past and present -- on immigration. The facts show that Monte Solberg's tenure as Immigration Minister is not about justice and dignity for migrants, but rather pandering to underlying racism and prejudices in Canadian society for electoral gain.

WHO WE ARE

We are organizers, active in immigrant rights groups like the Solidarity Across Borders network and the No One Is Illegal Collective in Montreal, supported by allies in Ottawa, and across Canada.

In the past several years, we have tirelessly campaigned for immigrant rights: we have written letters, signed petitions and organized pickets and demonstrations; we have actively resisted deportations, and supported individuals and families who are confronting the unjust immigration and refugee system.

Last year, we marched for one-week from Montreal to Ottawa; this past Saturday, we were part of the Status for All National Day of Action for Immigrant Rights, joining protests in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and elsewhere.

Some of us have direct experiences with the immigration and refugee system; some of us come from immigrant backgrounds; all of us are here today as part of a collective struggle for justice and dignity, for all migrants and refugees. We reject the divide and rule tactics of Monte Solberg, Joe Volpe and other politicians, and the division between “good” and “bad” immigrants often perpetuated by human rights groups.

Instead of the fear and paranoia promoted by the government, we organize to support each other, in the spirit of solidarity and mutual aid. We organize as part of a struggle for self-determination as migrants and refugees, supported by allies. We refuse to be invisible; we refuse to live in fear.

514-859-9023 -- www.solidarityacrossborders.org -- sansfrontieres@resist.ca