Protesters demand 'legal status for all'
 
JAN RAVENSBERGEN, The Gazette, Monday, May 05, 2008

Almost without exception, they spend their days and nights toiling deep in the shadows.

They are among the quiet ones who silently prepare your restaurant lunch, vacuum your office, wash your dirty laundry, mind your children or pick the locally grown carrots or apples on which you snack.

Yesterday, for a change, they weren't invisible.

A boisterous, chanting crowd of more than 400 demonstrators gave them voice in the Montreal neighbourhood where many of them - furtively - work and live.

The marchers paraded through the city's working-class Côte des Neiges district demanding recognition, respect and rights for what organizers said are 40,000 non-status migrants in the Montreal region.

A more widespread term is illegal immigrants.

According to the Canadian Hispanic Congress, an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 such individuals are quietly used across Canada to keep the nation's economic wheels turning.

Without immigration papers or status, however, organizers said, they are largely forced to live and work underground.

Easy targets for exploitation, they survive on the margins with virtually no recourse to the basic protections most in our society take for granted - in a nation built by successive waves of immigrants.

Aside from stoop-or-stretch work in our fields, "they work in restaurants, hotels, cabs, factories and warehouses," said Keetha Mercer, a march organizer with the Solidarity Across Borders group.

"Non-status migrants are the most exploited in the workforce, invisible in our system of capitalism and apartheid," added Jaggi Singh, another organizer and longtime social-justice advocate.

"They are our neighbours, co-workers, classmates, friends and families."

But they are just nobodies, as far as Quebec's Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, or CSST, is concerned, Tess Tessalona said.

She helped found the neighbourhood's Immigrant Workers Centre eight years ago and is its co-ordinator.

In Quebec, "domestic workers are the only salaried workers who are not guaranteed CSST coverage by their employer," Tessalona said.

She came to Canada from the Philippines in 1988 as a domestic worker.

Domestic workers and care-givers, usually immigrant and female, who care for children, the infirm or aged but do not live in, are not eligible for compensation when they suffer work-related back pain, muscular or skeletal disorders, allergies, burns, cuts or stress.

Tessalona's advocacy group used the march to gather names for a two-pronged demand to submit to David Whissell, Quebec's labour minister, seeking:

- Mandatory CSST coverage of domestic workers, regardless of immigration status or validity of work permit.

- That basic CCST information be available in languages other than French.

During the past five years, Statistics Canada reported Thursday, the economic chasm between native-born Canadians and immigrants has widened.

"That's not news to me, Tessalona said. "I see it every day."

Currently at the centre, "we are working on 500 cases," she said.

The march was billed as part of national day of action "for immigrant justice, and against poverty, racism and racial profiling."

Speakers and marchers condemned recent changes to security-certificate and immigration legislation from the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Adil Charkaoui - a Montrealer who remains under a federal security certificate and a form of house arrest that includes an obligatory electronic bracelet - joined the march.

"I want to give a message of hope and solidarity," said Charkaoui, who has been fighting a deportation order since 2003.

"We march to again demand a full, inclusive and ongoing (immigration) regularization program," organizer Singh said, "meaning (legal) status for all."

"We refuse," Mercer added, "to be invisible. We refuse to live in fear."

janr@thegazette.canwest.com

For more information, visit solidarityacrossborders.org or www.adilinfo.org.

 

Marooned for five years, Abousfian Abdelrazik gets $100 a month from Canada to survive, but no passport or clearance to go home

The Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui calls on all allies and supporters to join us in forming a strong contingent against racist immigration 'security' measures on Sunday, 4 May in the Solidarity Across Borders "Status for All!" march.

Sunday, 4 May 2008, 12:30pm

Gathering point: corner of Victoria and Van Horne (metro Plamondon, Van Horne exit)

To join the Justice for Adil contingent, look for the "Solidarity is our Security! Abolish racist (in)security certificates!" banner! 

Download flyer here.

We were disgusted and angered to see yet another attack on the reputation of Adil Charkaoui published in several media outlets last week.

Since his victory in the Supreme Court in February 2007, and since the Supreme Court agreed to hear a second challenge, this time aimed at the investigative practices of CSIS in security certificate cases, a steady stream of ‘revelations’ about Charkaoui has appeared in the media. Though not one of these has been backed up by proof, they have all tended to discredit Charkaoui, an eloquent and powerful defender of the rights of immigrants and of elementary justice in Canada.

Par Adil Charkaoui

Cela fait cinq ans que je lutte inlassablement, réclamant un procès juste et équitable selon les principes de la justice fondamentale et niant les allégations des services secrets canadiens. Or, à défaut d’un procès public, ce qu’on m’offre depuis le 23 février 2007, date à laquelle la Cour Suprême du Canada avait déclaré à l’unanimité les certificats de sécurité inconstitutionnels, c’est un procès sur la place publique, une campagne de diffamation. Dernier épisode en la matière : des allégations farfelues, ridicules, signées par un pseudonyme dans un forum de discussion sur le net!

Last month's edition of No one is illegal radio carried important interviews with two people at the forefront of the continuing campaign to abolish security certificates:

• Latifa Charkaoui, mother of Adil Charkaoui, speaking at the International Women's Day Conference in Montreal;

• Adil Charkaoui, one of five persons under a "security certificate", speaking at length about the "new" security certificate law.

LISTEN to the inverviews.

"The Canadian Border Services Agency has no explicit policy governing use of evidence suspected of coming from torture."

Canadian Press, 25 March 2008

MONTREAL — A French legal expert is warning Canada it will break international law if evidence obtained through torture is used to deport a suspected Basque terrorist.

Didier Rouget, a lawyer who has represented several torture victims, suggested Thursday that Canada is walking a dangerous line if it returns Ivan Apaolaza Sancho to Spain.

Sancho was arrested on a Quebec City ferry last summer and is wanted by Spain for a series of car bombings tied to the violent Basque separatist group ETA.

Cristin Schmitz, Lawyers' Weekly, March 28 2008

A longtime military lawyer, and a civil litigator whose major client is the federal Department of Public Works, are among the latest lawyers with links to the government of Canada who have been appointed as independent special advocates for those held under security certificates.

Lieutenant-Colonel Denis Couture of Ashton, Ont., who retired in 2003 after 27 years in the Office of the Judge Advocate General and who continues to work as a lawyer in the Canadian Forces (CF) reserves, and Sylvain Lussier, a Montreal civil litigator who was lead counsel for the federal government at the Gomery Commission of Inquiry into the sponsorship scandal from 2004 to 2006, were among the six new special advocates named by Justice Minister Rob Nicholson March 4.

Bob Robertson, The Ottawa Citizen, March 17, 2008
 
OTTAWA -- This is an open letter to the minister of Public Safety, Border Security and Wacky Haircuts, Mr. Stockwell Day.
 
Dear Minister Day,
 
I am writing to you because I think someone has to say these things. I have volunteered myself for the job because, perhaps, you might personally read it, knowing it came from me. Remember, you heard my routine once, then stole some of my jokes? But that's a story for another day (or another Day).
 
I was at the airport heading out on another comedy jaunt into the hinterland, bringing quality laughs to the humour-starved residents of postal codes with a lot of zeroes in them.