Original author: Catherine Cullen
Source: The Globe and Mail
URL: [link]
Date: April 27, 2005


MONTREAL -- Refugee advocates are planning a week-long protest march from Montreal to Ottawa in June to demand changes to Canada's immigration system.

The "No One is Illegal" march will begin on June 18 in downtown Montreal, organizers said.

The procession will pass the Immigration and Refugee Board office and then head through the Parc Extension and Côte-Des-Neiges neighbourhoods, both of which have large immigrant populations.

Participants will stay the night in Montreal and then begin the nearly 200-kilometre trek to Ottawa. They plan to arrive on June 25 to celebrate with a festival near Parliament Hill.

Organizers say they expect thousands to participate.Solidarity Without Borders, a coalition of refugee-rights advocates that is planning the march, wants Canada to stop issuing security certificates. The certificates allow the government to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely without charges.

Group members say they also want an end to the detention and deportation of all migrants, immigrants and refugees. In addition, they want to see all people without status made permanent residents or landed immigrants.

"Our refugee system has become so problematic structurally that if you were to apply the rules of today to the generation of immigrants from the '60s and '70s -- like my parents -- they wouldn't be allowed," said well-known Canadian activist and group member Jaggi Singh, whose parents emigrated from India.

The government needs to recognize the important social, cultural and economic contributions of refugees, without whom cities like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver would have to shut down, march organizer Sarita Ahooja said.

Plans for the march were announced yesterday outside the Guy-Favreau Complex in Montreal, which houses Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board.

"[This is] where all the injustices of the Canadian system begin," Ms. Ahooja said. The immigration process creates a whole class of people who are denied rights, she added.

Security certificates reflect the irony of the Canadian immigration system, Mr. Singh said. "It's the people who are new to Canada [who] are the ones who are teaching us about due process."

"There's no link between immigration and terrorism," organizer Tatiana Gomez said. "That's a misrepresentation that's being perpetuated."

The idea for the march came from Shamin Akhtar, a refugee claimant from Pakistan who was deported in 2004, organizers said. Ms. Akhtar saw the march as a way to draw attention to the problems immigrants and refugees face in Canada.

The date of the march was chosen to coincide with the anniversaries of similar marches organized by the women's movement in 1995 and the labour movement during the Great Depression.

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