TESTIMONIES from people arrested in the raids!
Reports about Harper’s RACIST immigration plans!
A chance to EXPRESS your anger and disgust!
Build Canada’s first RAIDS RESPONSE NETWORK!
June 6, 1:30-3:00pm, 252 Bloor West
Join No One Is Illegal - Toronto, Justicia for Migrant Workers and Migrante-ON to for an open community dialogue and strategizing session on the recent immigration raids in Southern Ontario. June 6 will mark the launch of the Stop the Raids! Campaign and a community Raids Response Network. There will be testimonies from people arrested in the raids, reports about changes in the Immigration process and brief reports from the community raids response network.
Write to Prime Minister Harper, Leamington Police Chief Gow, and Immigration Enforcement Manager Schuler
On 27 and 28 May, 2009, CBSA with help from local Police arrested at least 20 farm-workers for no crime except that they were trying to earn a decent living.
These workplace raids cannot be allowed to become the new reality of Canadian Immigration. (For further information, see below.)
We need immediate, urgent action against CBSA-Windsor, the Leamington Police and Prime Minister Harper!
Your two minutes in sending an email could make a critical difference. Leamington has yet to see a concerted political campaign ?show them how many people think that these raids are unacceptable!
On May 2, 2009, over 2000 community activists, migrants and allies took to the streets.
We occupied the Yonge and Dundas intersection in the heart of downtown Toronto to make visible the non-status people that this sweatshop city wants to hide away.
We dropped 50 foot banners that read 'No One Is Illegal' and 'Stop the Raids' to make clear that migrants, with or without status, working people and the poor will not be criminalized.
We went to the gates of City Hall dropping massive banners at its doors to insist that Toronto, Ontario and Canada cannot ignore us.
School by school, college by college, hospital by hospital, shelter by shelter, food bank by food bank - one after the other we are going to liberate our homes, our workplaces and our communities. We will make them sanctuaries for all residents. If the powerful few will not let us in to their house of decisions, we will change the decisions where they are put in to practice.
It is hard to write an article about Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's attacks on Canadian racialized communities. As soon as one draft is complete, Kenney is at it again, spinning new lies and venting hateful rhetoric. In a federal cabinet chock-a-block with unsavory characters, Kenney stands first in line. Kenney has expanded his use of arbitrary power and has moved with stealth to significantly reduce the number of family-class immigrants applying from countries of the Global South. While on the one hand Kenney and the Conservatives portray themselves as the friend of immigrant communities, their administrative edicts to Citizenship and Immigration Canada and legislative changes have resulted in the door being shut on immigrants' hands.
by Faria Kamal, Chris Ramsaroop and Syed Hussan | April 8, 2009
rabble.ca
Nearly 200 outraged community and labour activists rattled the fences of Rexdale Immigration Detention Centre on April 5, demanding the release of over 100 undocumented workers arrested during unprecedented immigration raids across southwestern Ontario.
Chanting ‘No One Is Illegal! Stop deporting people,’ ‘We didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us’ and ’Justice for migrant workers,’ teachers, lawyers and organizers from OSSTF D12, Parkdale Legal Community Services, Mujeres Al Frente, the Sikh Activist Network, the Good Jobs Coalition, CUPE, UFCW, CAW, OPSEU and many others joined family members and friends on Sunday morning. Organized by No One is Illegal-Toronto, Migrante Ontario and Justicia for Migrant Workers, the spirited action was in response to three separate but coordinated attacks against undocumented communities.
WASHINGTON — The Conservative government reversed itself today and denied an emergency passport to Abousfian Abdelrazik, preventing the Canadian citizen - blacklisted as a terrorist - from flying home to Montreal.
In a terse explanation, it said Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon considers Mr. Abdelrazik a national security threat.
In a one-sentence letter, delivered this morning to Mr. Abdelrazik's lawyers, the justice department said “the minister of foreign affairs has decided to refuse your client's request for an emergency passport.” It cited Section 10.1 of the Canada Passport Order which says “the minister may refuse or revoke a passport if the minister is of the option that such action is necessary for the national security of Canada or another country.”
The refusal represents a complete reversal of the government's written promise of three months ago to issue Mr. Abdelrazik an emergency passport if he had a paid-for ticket home. Mr. Abdelrazik remains stranded in the lobby of the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, where he has living for nearly 11 months, granted “temporary safe haven” by former Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier.
