Undocumented Migrants and Students, Same Fight: Permanent Status for All
WHAT: Rally
WHEN: Saturday, February 21 at 2 p.m.
WHERE: In front of the offices of the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) 1200 Saint-Laurent Boulevard
Undocumented immigrants, international students, refugees, and their allies are gathering this Saturday in front of the MIFI offices to present a united front against Québec’s barrage of anti-migrant policies and to demand permanent status for all undocumented and precarious status migrants, as well as an end of the Safe Third Country Agreement.
For years, Quebec has been pursuing xenophobic policies: from the pressure on the federal government that led to the closure of Roxham Road to refugees in transit through the United States, interminable delays for CSQ for undocumented migrants trying to regularise, the suspension of family sponsorship programs, cuts to social programs for refugee families, the end of pilot projects to allow working class temporary foreign workers to apply for permanent status, the end of the PEQ (Quebec Experience Program), not to mention the hardening of anti-migrant rhetoric. These policies plunge migrants into even more desperate situations of exploitation and precarity in Quebec’s fields, factories, and hospitals.
Rejecting the ‘good migrant’ discourse which forces migrants to prove their worth, uniting across the different categories in which the government places them, migrants and allies gather to denounce the dehumanising, xenophobic populism of the CAQ government, with its devastating consequences on migrant lives, to say that everyone deserves dignity, not because of our skills, but because we are human beings first and foremost.
