Saturday, 30 January at Noon
Complexe Guy-Favreau, 200 Réne Lévesque West (Place d’armes Metro)
COVID-19
*In the context of the pandemic, we ask that all participants maintain a physical distance of 2 meters from one another (each person will have their designated dance zone!)
*We also ask participants who attend the demonstration to wear masks.
In the context of the second wave of the pandemic, as numbers continue to climb, Solidarity Across Borders is calling a dance-protest to demand Status for All, with no exceptions. No one should be left behind.
The pandemic, in both first and second wave, has exposed and worsened the situation of migrants with precarious status and particularly undocumented migrants in Canada. Now everyone knows who is forced to work the worst jobs in the worst conditions. Although this work supports the lifestyle of many others in Canada, these workers often have no access to decent labour standards, job protection, healthcare, daycare, social assistance or emergency relief. One out of 23 people in Canada do not have a permanent status and are affected by these injustices in different ways. Despite this new awareness and these figures, neither the Quebec nor Canadian governments have taken any serious action, choosing instead to deflect focus onto a handful of refugees working as health workers whom they have decided to “reward” by providing a potentially faster and more certain pathway to regularization.
The new COVID measures put in place by Legault’s CAQ government clearly show where its priorities lie: with capitalists and not with working class, poor and racialized communities. The Quebec state has failed to put in place measures that would allow workers, many of whom have precarious immigration status, to work in safety or to safely stay at home, and thus slow the transmission of the virus. Instead they have established a curfew, to be enforced by systematically racist police forces. The curfew will further marginalize all precarious communities, among them undocumented community members forced to work at night, placing them at risk of arrest and, in some cases, detention and deportation.
For its part, Trudeau’s Liberal government has shown callous indifference to the exclusion of undocumented migrants from COVID relief programmes in Canada and ignored calls for status for all. Since March, most deportations have been suspended and immigration detention centres across the country have been largely emptied. This new normal should be extended to everyone, made permanent and formalized with a comprehensive regularization programme.
Solidarity Across Borders invites all non-status people to join the movement, whatever their status: undocumented, international students, temporary workers, caregivers, and refugees. Young or old, employed or unemployed, criminalized or not. We call on everyone facing discrimination because of their immigration status to join together to demand *status for all!*
We also invite all people and organizations who share our ideals of justice and equality and support the cause of non status people.
The injustice, discrimination, and the exploitation of non-status people must stop! We unite to demand a comprehensive regularization programme: status for all!
Background
* Principles for a regularization programme in Canada: https://www.solidarityacrossborders.org/en/principles-for-a-regularization-program-in-canada