News

Joint Statement of No One Is Illegal Toronto, No One Is Illegal Vancouver, No One Is Illegal Halifax, No One Is Illegal Montreal and No One Is Illegal Ottawa, July 3, 2010

Pledge to end racist scapegoating of migrant workers during economic recession

On Saturday June 6, 2009, nearly a hundred people assembled to hear from people directly affected by the recent Immigration raids that have terrorized migrant communities.

Immigration raids conducted in April saw over 100 migrant workers arrested and were followed by another raid in May where nearly 2 dozen workers were arrested.

"We are not illegal" related Flor, a migrant farm worker who witnessed the raids this May. "All we ask for is to make a living".

Another migrant worker who was arrested in the April raids explained her situation: She was forced to quit the job she had a work permit for because of horrendous conditions involving a criminal investigation against her employer. She was arrested in an Immigration raids while working and was jailed for a month.

No One Is Illegal-Toronto sends greetings of solidarity to delegates at the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) 2009 convention, 23-25 April 2009.

At the convention, OPSEU passed a historic resolution to join community groups in condemning immigration raids, demanding a full and inclusive regularization program (and lobbying NUPGE to take a similar stance), committing to lobbying the province to provide services to undocumented people, demanding that the government enact legislation that regulates recruitment agencies, work with community groups to develop educational materials, workshops and presentations for OPSEU membership and others, and make a financial contribution to No One Is Illegal-Toronto, Migrante Ontario and Justicia for Migrant Workers.

April 04, 2009
The Associated Press

QUETTA, Pakistan – At least 62 people suffocated to death in a truck container packed with illegal migrants, and dozens were rescued unconscious today after Pakistani police acting on a tip opened the container near the Afghan border.

Rasool Bakhsh, a senior police official in the city of Quetta, said the shipping container the truck was carrying entered Pakistan from Afghanistan and was headed for Iran. He said most of the victims were Afghans.

More than 100 people were packed inside the 12-metre-long metal container, Bakhsh said. Survivors were rushed to the hospital, many of them unconscious.

Khalid Masood, another senior officer, said a total of 62 of the migrants were pronounced dead.

Television footage shot shortly after the white container was opened showed dozens of bodies, many of them stripped to the waist, lined up on the road next to the truck.

By Monisha Martins
Maple Ridge News
March 31, 2009

With his left arm wrapped in dirty cotton bandage, Réné Escamilla is the last prisoner to limp into the visitor’s area.

It is crowded with overturned tables, a hastily cleaned whiteboard and has a view of a small concrete-walled prison yard.

Réné hobbles slowly, breaking into a grin when he sees his wife.

Marta frowns as he lowers himself, carefully, into a chair.

“Why the beard?,” she asks in Spanish, her voice drowning in the cacophony of a crowded visitor’s room at the Fraser Regional Correctional Centre in Maple Ridge.

Sitting flush against a L-shaped wooden barrier, behind yellowed Plexiglas, the 34-year-old El Salvadorean with scruffy stubble on his chin asks Marta to hold up his baby.

Leylani, at the time just three months old, has the tiny hand and delicate, fragile face that’s typical of premature babies. She’s lost in her yellow woolly cardigan and pink blanket.