Refugee reforms include fingerprints, no appeals for some

NDP says bill to roll back earlier concessions rejects good legislation

This post comes at the suggestion of one of our readers who comments: " I was wondering if you could do a blog spot post related to Bill C-31 the new immigration and refugee legislation. There's alot of parallels to how the Conservatives are packaging the changes to the refugee system as they did with bill c-10. I've attached a pdf released by CARL, and frankly the changes are frightening and so un-Canadian. I know its a crime oriented post but maybe something along the lines of border control? I'm not sure, but there are provisions in Bill C-4 with harsher sentences and longer periods of detention, which will face Charter challenges. In any case I just think what the Conservatives are tabling is egregious and was hoping you could help spread the word." Here is the pdf.

And here is the story.

New, tougher reforms to refugee legislation that hasn't yet come into force are already drawing fire from critics who say they give Canada's immigration minister too much power and risk the lives of claimants.

Bill C-31, introduced Thursday by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, toughens the measures taken in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, a compromise bill passed under a Conservative minority government. That earlier bill has yet to be implemented. It was due to be up and running by June 29.

Kenney says he wants the new bill passed by that date and implemented sometime next fall.

The bill will implement long-planned biometric identification — including fingerprints and photos — for people who apply for visas to visit Canada, and allow the minister to select which countries are "safe," known as a designated country of origin.

Read on....

Crimbrary always appreciates story suggestions from our readers. Tom

Arrival of the Fittest

Canada’s crime rate is dropping as immigration increases. Is there a connection?

The view from one of Thorncliffe Park’s towers

Late last summer, the MV Sun Sea, a small Thai cargo ship, entered Canadian waters off the British Columbia coast, where it was intercepted by the navy and the RCMP. Crowded on board were 492 Tamils, including women and children. The vessel’s arrival was not unexpected; in fact, the government had been monitoring its journey for months and had intelligence that it was smuggling refugees from Sri Lanka. Canada has been a popular destination for people fleeing the ravages of the twenty-six-year civil war and a 2004 tsunami: there are now 20,000 Sri Lankans here, and more coming all the time.

A few days before the Sun Sea reached the coast, public safety minister Vic Toews was in Toronto giving a luncheon speech on national security to the Economic Club of Canada and announced, “I can assure you that we are concerned about who is on that ship and why they might be coming to Canada.” He was referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as the Tamil Tigers, which has been banned in Canada as a terrorist organization. The previous year, when a rusty ship called the Ocean Lady carrying seventy-six Tamil men arrived off the coast of Vancouver Island, the government arrested the passengers and held them for months, alleging that a third of them were Tamil Tigers sent to infiltrate Canada and set up operations here. (No evidence was ever found to support that claim, and they’ve since been released. All are pursuing refugee claims.)

That the point person was Toews, and not Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship, immigration, and multiculturalism, was telling. It framed the Sun Sea situation as a potential danger to the public, and prompted a swift response. The passengers were put into detention (nearly sixty of them remain there, and in March two were ordered to be deported because of ties to the Tigers). The government also introduced Bill C-49, which would allow officials to detain smuggled migrants for one year, and bar them from applying for permanent residence and sponsoring family members for five years.

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This article draws on some work co-authored by Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies prof Ron Levi. Tom