Our Statement on Bill C-12: How Canada's New Border Law Makes Migrants More Disposable (45th Parliament)

Bill C-12 is not an administrative bill and it is not a bill to improve the immigration system. It is a sweeping attack on the rights of migrants and refugees in Canada.

This bill attacks refugee rights, expands the powers of the Canada Border Services Agency toward ICE-like enforcement, undermines due process, dismantles privacy, and grants sweeping powers to the minister and cabinet by shifting major decisions into regulations rather than law debated by the legislature. The retroactive application of this bill threatens to pull the rug out from under people already in the system while continuing to strip migrants of what little protection remains.

Sometimes it is not hard to question if the state even thinks of migrants as humans given how quickly it is ready to scapegoat us or take our rights away with little to no remorse, and almost every time it talks about us it is in reference to economic contributions.

The government has allowed, and often played an active role in some of its discourse, the spread of racist and xenophobic narratives by blaming migrants for systemic failures it created. Migrants did not cause the housing crisis while unregulated Airbnbs flourished and homes were commodified. Migrants did not cause the cost-of-living crisis while grocery chains price-gouged. Migrants did not cause labour precarity while employers exploited desperation. Migrants are often underpaid, overworked, housed in inhumane conditions, and denied basic services, and then blamed for surviving.

Migrants can lose healthcare for losing employment, reducing course loads as students, or for reasons entirely outside their control. In many provinces, migrants are denied healthcare altogether and are left hoping for empathy from someone, somewhere, when they need help.

As for employment, many migrants cannot change employers altogether, and those who can often have restrictions on hours or sectors of work. In fact, migrants continue to be the only group in Canada for whom it is explicitly illegal to conduct sex work and many migrants in other industries are prohibited from working outside their industry as well.

Another talking point we frequently hear is migrants don’t pay taxes, and yet that continues to be objectively false. Migrants have always paid taxes. In fact, many of us here probably have heard of head taxes where migrants were taxed extra. There is nothing that makes you exempt from paying taxes solely by being a migrant. However, even if someone did not pay taxes, would we ever ask of a citizen who doesn’t pay income taxes, for whatever reason, to not be eligible for healthcare or social services, or to lose other rights? Hopefully not, because if you pay for your rights they aren’t rights anymore, and because that would be inhumane. Yet, we continue to apply that standard to migrants. You know who often doesn’t pay taxes? The richest Canadians. They continue to be citizens while price gounging every one of us and commodifying our very existence from water to groceries to housing. No one talks about preventing them from accessing healthcare.

Migrants also continue to experience ableism from the government. Medical inadmissibility literally puts a price tag on migrants’ lives by deciding whether someone is allowed to stay in Canada based on how much their illness might cost the state. If you are a migrant in Canada and get sick while here, you can risk deportation for having fallen sick should they think you create “excessive demand.” In fact, a few years ago, various news organizations shared a story about a long time resident of PEI who went in to avail of mental health services only for them to be reported to immigration as they were made to sign a contract when they lacked capacity and thus face detention while risking deportation. There is no clearer example of how the state treats migrants as disposable than this. “You came to Canada to be our cash cows but now you are broken so off you go as we kick you out.”

In fact, harmful rhetoric perpetuated by the state has put migrants in danger. Migrants face the risk of assault, frequently experience being on the receiving end of disgust, and are generally attributed to the source of all evil, when the problem isn’t your neighbour, your friend, your colleague, or your fellow resident of Canada, irrespective of status or lack thereof. Migrants did not create this system and we certainly did not come here to lose our rights. Many migrants move here and consider Canada our home and people here our family. Migrants aren’t the villain of this story, the system is. Migrants often say racism and hate feels normal, and this is a reminder that it should not.

While the government and the rich are glad you have someone else to be angry about, remember it is them who hoard and regulate the housing market, them who own grocery chains and control the commodification of life itself, and them who decide labour protection and access to services.

Many of the justifications being used to reduce migrant rights today are rooted in Malthusian thinking which is the idea that some lives are expendable in the name of “sustainability.” These same talking points are used to justify immigration caps and claims about bringing Canada’s immigration down to “sustainable levels.”

Malthusian ideology is also what Thanos used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to justify the Snap. It should deeply concern all of us how easily government talking points can be compared to the logic of a comic super-villain and how often that logic is treated as reasonable when it comes from the state.

It is critical to remind ourselves that migrants aren’t our enemies and that no one is illegal on stolen land. This attack from Bill C-12 is adding onto a pile of attacks on migrant rights and continues to harm migrant justice. However, we aren’t powerless.

We invite people to reach out to movements and get involved, share your capacity, call MPs and MHAs, look out for migrants in your community, and get involved in the movement. If you wish to learn more about migrant rights, share your stories, organize someplace, or volunteer alongside us and get involved with the Migrant Action Centre, we also encourage you to email us at [email protected] or contact us via social media.

We, together, have the ability to educate yourself and others, the ability to call people about Bill C-12 and to make noise about other injustices we continue to face, to not stay quiet when you see hate, to let your migrant friends and family know you are there for them, and to claim space and create change. It is times like these that we realize the power of every single voice and we need yours to help protect human rights.

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