The real story on immigration in Canada

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Since 2008 immigrants have found it more difficult to come to Canada, to stay perma­ nently, and to become citizens. This situation is the result of many changes to the federal government’s immigration and refugee policy.

Most of the changes were made without pub­ lic debate, and often were hidden in omnibus bills. Some changes are made by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration simply issuing instructions to immigration officers.

The number of immigrants accepted over the past 10 years has been about 260,000 a year. But the folks selected are drawn more from the economic class, fewer from the fam­ ily class, and there are far fewer refugees. In 2014, refugees were less than 9 per cent, as compared to 14 per cent in 2005, while the economic immigrants rose to 63.4 per cent, heading towards a target of 70 per cent.

Who are those economic entrants? Increas­ ingly they are temporary workers or interna­ tional students. The first group is often uti­ lized as a source of cheap labour. Members of the second group typically pay very high fees to attend a Canadian university.

Many temporary workers, especially those in low-skilled jobs, are ineligible to apply for permanent residence. The result is a growing num­ ber of people without access to services, supports and mobility rights. Some of them stay anyway, go­ ing underground—where they have no recourse to being poorly paid.

The most egregious changes since 2008 are those aimed at refugees. They are denied essential health care. Many are considered not to be legitimate refu­ ... Parenthood (continued from page 1: “Women protest attacks on Planned Parenthood”)

aid funds to pay for abortion. This has meant that one out of four women using this health support funding has been forced to carry an unwanted fetus to term.

Versions of the Hyde amendment have been attached to spending bills under both Republican and Demo­ cratic majorities and presidents for nearly 40 years.

The current right-wing “radicals’” attack was made possible by the failure of both capitalist parties to ac­ cept the Supreme Court’s recognition of the power of the women’s movement, in the streets, during the 1960s and 1970s. This political failure has not only impacted the availability of abortion but the availabil­ ity of women’s health care in general.

Today, according to a study commissioned by Con­ ... Climate action (continued from page 12: “Climate activists call for an end to fossil fuels”) medial measures for communities of the oppressed na­ tionalities, who, as the victims of racism, have endured decades of breathing foul air, drinking contaminated wa­ ter, and suffering from damaged health while living and working in neighborhoods or on tribal lands besieged by petro-chemical plants, toxic incinerators, uranium mines, and now, fracking drill pads and tar sand pits.

Environmental clean-up, ecosystem restoration, and the best health care for those communities must be giv­ en top priority and be a vital part of achieving justice and ending environmental racism.

On the international level, people of the Global South are suffering even more intensely from the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation. Patho­ gens and disease vectors are on the rise from warming temperatures. Island nations are drowning due to rising sea levels. Poor infrastructure and health-care systems in developing nations make it that much harder to cope with natural disasters. Famine is more likely because of the destruction of subsistence food production and its replacement with cash luxury crops grown for northern markets.

The imposition of GMOs by transnational biotech com­ panies has further weakened food production and the ability to survive by contaminating the drought-resis­ tant heirloom seeds developed by indigenous farmers. Developing nations must be ensured the aid they need to adapt to climate change and improve their quality of life while avoiding the destructive path to development of the advanced industrial North. gees, simply because they are from countries deemed to be “safe.” Hungary is considered by Ottawa to be “safe” despite its horrendous treatment of Roma and other minorities.

The Harper Conservative government publicly com­ mitted to accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next three years. Barely over 2000 have been admit­ ted—a grossly inadequate response to the desperate millions now fleeing Africa and the Middle East due gress, created by the Guttmacher Foundation and us­ ing 2010 statistics, Planned Parenthood serves 36% of the 6.7 million women that get contraceptive care from “safety-net family-planning health centers.” In 11 states, Planned Parenthood serves more than half of the women getting this kind of care. The other “safety-net” providers serve far fewer women, offer a much narrower range of contraceptive methods, less frequently offer oral contraceptives on site, and are less likely to offer same-day appointments.

The organization’s ability to provide nearly same day service means that for low-income women, Planned Parenthood is often the most easily acces­ sible care for ailments not only of the body but for all kinds of everyday anxieties arising from the effort to organize one’s ability to survive and thrive in capital­ ist America.

The recent attack on Planned Parenthood is an es­ pecially cruel assault on the health of the underem­ This means that the big polluting nations must pay not only for their transgressions against the climate but also for their super-exploitation and disproportionate over­ consumption of natural resources, many of which have been stolen from other countries and taken by force at the cost of millions of lives. Clean technologies such as wind turbines, solar voltaics, and mass transit systems should be produced for export and given free to developing countries.

Furthermore, climate change Aikis Konstantinidis / Reuters (Above) Syrian refugees shout their demands in Syntagma Square in Athens.

to wars and environmental disruption—products of the savage global profit system.

Stephen Harper’s priority is to portray refugees as a security threat, and to cite them as a justification for more military spending and wars of intervention abroad. n ployed and youthful unemployed, as well as a genuine threat to the defense and expansion of reproductive justice in the U.S. The continuous and insufficiently answered misogyny of those who have targeted its funding is part of an ideological offensive designed to whittle away at the support that the majority of Amer­ icans have given to abortion rights since the second wave of feminism and to create pockets of the popu­ lation that could be mobilized for assaults on all the movements for social change and economic justice.

Pink Out Day and #ShoutOutYourAbortion are im­ portant first steps in the effort to counter the latest of these efforts. The movement needs to move quickly, however, toward mounting the kind of mobilization that occurred last September when half a million people marched in New York for climate justice. This is how abortion was legalized and contraception destigmatized, and this is our strongest weapon for their defense. n without any further interference from transnationals, which aim to ruthlessly exploit the energy and other re­ sources.

As the climate crisis movement places environmental justice at the center of its program for change, these nec­ essary points will become more widely adopted. n Two rallies to challenge U.S. racist wars at home and abroad: