Defend International students from racist CBSA attacks

On August 12th, the CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) conducted a full-scale immigration raid at a peaceful protest site, specifically targeting international students. After numerous international students were asked to produce their papers, a few were forced to report to the CBSA office, where removal orders were issued. This action is an appalling escalation in immigration enforcement in Canada, one that threatens to normalize an ICE-like persecution of immigrants, and one that should raise alarm bells for every person living in so-called Canada, for numerous reasons.

 

The issue

 

These students had been seeking clarification and justice from the Federal Government, after the IRCC (Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada) had issued a mass-denial of PGWP (Post Graduate Work Permit) applications, effectively pushing more than 1500 students, graduates from Portage College, towards undocumented status.

 

This denial was based on a new and arbitrary eligibility criteria disqualifying students enrolled in ‘non-credit’ programs of study, a criteria that didn’t exist when the students had begun (and completed) their program of study. All the applicable rules during their time of study meant that they would be eligible for a PGWP. However, suddenly and overnight, the IRCC quietly edited their webpage, at first adding the new rule, and then proceeding to deny the applications en masse. This is a pattern in Canada now, where blanket denials are issued based on abruptly changing rules and randomly moving targets. But behind every single file, every single application, is a human being who is very much part of our collective social life on these lands – as a neighbour, a friend, a partner, a classmate or a colleague.

 

In this case, by retroactively applying a new rule to past applicants, the IRCC has inhumanely pulled the rug out from underneath the feet of young students, exposing them to grave uncertainty and distress. This action is currently under judicial review, with a decision pending. In the meantime, the students have been exercising their right to peaceful assembly and protest, to seek clarification and to spread awareness of their issue to broader Canadian society.

 

Defend human rights

 

The right to peaceful assembly is a basic and universal human right that is formally enshrined both in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Needless to say, when a right is ‘universal’ and ‘human’, it should be accessible and applicable to all human beings universally.

 

CBSA coming down to an immigrant protest, to demand papers and to persecute the students who are exercising their rights, is unconscionable in any case. In this instance, it is even more alarming that CBSA officers harassed these international students after being explicitly invited to do so by Calgary Police –  and all while their PGWP denials are still pending judicial review. Just the previous day, the protest leaders had met with Liberal MPs Ruby Sahota and Amandeep Sodhi, and had received their reassurances that the issue will be looked into and addressed.

 

It is apparent that such a coordinated action involving municipal, provincial, and federal agencies, on the very next day, is clearly designed to strike fear into the hearts of the young students, to intimidate them from exercising their human rights, and to create a public spectacle that further fuels the anti-migrant racism now rampant in Canadian society.

 

We have to take seriously that the de-humanization of international students in Canada, which is constantly peddled and pushed by far-right and fascist hate groups, has now created a dangerous atmosphere which risks de-sensitizing broader Canadian society to the suffering of migrants and international students. By spreading conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement, these groups have tried to normalize racist hatred in society, based on tropes of racial hygiene and reproductive racism. We must challenge these notions everywhere we encounter them, and fight back against anti-migrant racism everywhere.

 

The absence of widespread popular outrage in response to the CBSA raids is a grim reminder of the work ahead of us to challenge hate, defend the humanity of migrant workers, and build a movement for migrant justice. We must organize with all our hearts to reverse that trend.

 

Hands off our neighbours

 

What happened in Calgary is not an isolated incident. This is very much part of an ongoing escalation of anti-migrant racism in Canada, which is now beginning to be enacted with impunity by state agencies and infrastructures.

 

Every worker in Canada, regardless of where we were born or how long we have lived here, should extend our solidarity with the international students and immigrant workers, because our struggles are inherently connected and intertwined as one.

 

The ongoing authoritarian push that is forcing so many of our neighbours into undocumented status is very much written into the design of the capitalist political economy. Undocumented workers can be exploited more severely, paid lower wages, and excluded from the ability to organize, and to exercise their legal rights.

 

When this becomes normalized, even workers with temporary and permanent resident status will be trapped more firmly within the psychological prison of precarity, intimidated into being silent spectators of their own exploitation. If left unchecked, these attacks will subject all workers in Canada to intensifying precarity, systematic erosion of rights, and the heavy-handed use of legal power with impunity – permanently and overnight.

 

This is the lesson from history: the attack on migrant workers is an attack on all workers, and we must organize and rise together in solidarity.

 

No one left behind! Permanent Status for All!

 

Those who wish to learn more about the Portage College Protests and the CBSA Raid can visit tinyurl.com/PortageProtestPrimer, and those who are able to support the legal defense of the affected students can contribute at tinyurl.com/PortageLegalFund.

 

Photo from Naujawan Support Network: https://www.instagram.com/naujawansupportnetwork/