Continuing news stories about the federal government’s proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Act, including:
“Immigration changes unfair, critics charge“. Toronto Star. March 24/08.
“Liberals urged to fight immigration proposals“. The Globe and Mail. March 24/08.
“Finley defends contentious immigration overhaul“. CTV News. March 23/08.
Also see earlier posts on immigrantchildren.ca, including:
Canadian Council for Refugees on proposed amendments to the IRPA. March 17/08.
Amendments to IRPA. March 16/08.
Economic class favoured over family reunification? March 13/08.
Author: marcocampana
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Proposed changes to immigration legislation
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Refugee Rights Day is April 4
April 4 is Refugee Rights Day in Canada. April 4th marks the day that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to refugee claimants in Canada (1985).
The Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) website has a useful package of materials on Refugee Rights Day. -
Children's books about immigration, II
The Canadian Children’s Book News, Winter 2008, Vol. 31, No. 1, includes two reviews of children’s books on immigration. In the article “Imagination & Immigration”, Toronto librarian Brenda Halliday profiles chapter-book Shu-Li and Tamara, written by Paul Yee and illustrated by Shaoli Wang (Tradewind Books, 2007). An excerpt from Halliday’s review:
“Shu-Li struggles to fit in and blend her Chinese and North American cultures. She is both embarrassed by her mother’s English and fiercely loyal to her when the cool girls from school laugh at her attempts. Though she respects her parents’ authority, she wishes to be more independent. … ultimately this is a story of loyalty and friendship…”.
Also in this issue, a review of Indian Tales: A Barefoot Collection, written by Shenaaz Nanji and illustrated by Christopher Corr which is billed as “The perfect read-aloud to foster multicultural learning” as it tells 8 stories, from different parts of India, each with a short introduction to the state’s unique culture.
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World directory of minorities and indigeneous peoples
Minority Groups International (MGI) is an international non-governmental organization that works with over 100 partners in 60 countries to ensure minority voices are heard and rights are won and maintained. MGI has consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
MGI has released a country-by-country profile of the history and contemporary situations of the world’s minorities and indigenous peoples, entitled the State of the World’s Minorities. Each country profile includes information about the environment, history, governance, and current state of minority and indigeneous peoples.
A brief excerpt about Canada:“Canada is often described as ‘a country of immigrants’, perhaps implying that it is by definition both a diverse and tolerant country. However, members of certain ethnic groups and most First Nations people face widespread discrimination and endure poorer-than-average living standards in Canada. … As a general rule, the relative position of minorities is determined by factors such as the darkness of skin colour, popular pressures, political expedience and economic conditions. Language is also a dividing line, especially between the English-speaking majority and French Canadian minority. Many English-speakers in the French-majority province of Quebec consider themselves disempowered”.
Lots of interesting information and data here, and searchable on-line. Visit the Minority Rights Group International website.
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Conference call: 2008 (US) National refugee and immigration conference
The National Refugee and Immigration Conference will be held Sept 25-26/08 in Chicago. The aim of the conference is to identify issues, emphasize best practices and highlight innovations by providing those who work with refugees and immigrants an opportunity to learn from and to network with one another. Children and families are a focus of this conference.
From The Center website:“Refugees and other immigrants in the U.S. must do their best to manage transitions and adjustments in new communities. Many families endure poverty, low wage employment, and attend schools under strain. Frequently, it is these families’ first experiences with formal education and urban life. Both adults and children experience tension in family relationships since cultural adjustment puts additional stress on marital and parental structures. Along with these struggles, however, comes evidence of strength and resilience, including healthy families, strong work ethic and aspirations, cohesive communities and faith.
Services for pre-school and K-12 refugee youth and their families may be compromised by differing perceptions and misunderstandings concerning the cultural adjustment process, health, health care, and nutrition, public education enrollment and attendance, academic roles and expectations, and American conventions and laws. Efforts to help refugee youth and families will have a better chance of succeeding if they are based on shared understandings and collaborative partnerships among families, schools, health and mental health providers.
Proposals are being accepted that address these and other related issues”.Deadline for submissions is May 2/08. See the application here.
Registration questions: Tatiana Davidson. To receive conference updates, email Losheff@thecenterweb.org. -
Childhood and migration conference, June 20-22, Philadelphia
A look at child migration through the lens of child rights. This US conference, sponsored by the Working Group on Childhood Migration features keynote speaker Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard Law School and Executive Director of the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies.
The conference is raising some of the following questions:How are children’s rights and the notion of children as citizens affected by transnationalism, or by movement of parents and children in and out of various national legal systems?What are the emotional consequences of family separation across migratory families, especially for children?
What are children’s perspectives on migration, how are they to be elicited, how well can they be elicited and represented, and what can these perspectives tell us about socialization and processes of maturation in transnational families?
How is migration shaping any given culture group’s notions of childhood, and how are cultural notions of childhood shaping migration?
How do media and policy makers represent children in migration and how do discourses about immigrant children and migrant parents affect their lives and experiences?What can we do to generate better quantitative and qualitative data on the effects that migration has on children? What are the numbers of migrant children and how are they best defined as children in their own rights?For more information, visit the conference website.
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Migration through a child's eyes: Project of the (US) Working Group on Childhood & Migration
Visit this site to view drawings by Mexican children who have parents living in the United States. The drawings are about the child’s perceptions of citizenship, transnationalism and immigration and were collected as part of a research project of the Working Group on Childhood and Migration.
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welcomehere.ca
The Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs (FRP), with funding from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, have developed a resource kit for welcoming newcomer families participation in community-based programs. From an announcement (Mar 19/08) on the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Promotion listserv:
“Over the past year, under the Welcome Here project, family resource programs and settlement agencies in communities across Canada have collaborated together to offer new and improved programs to newcomer families. The Welcome Here Resource Kit will share some of the lessons learned in these communities. The kit will also contain some useful tools for community programs including a multi-lingual welcome poster, multi-lingual parent resource sheets, ideas for preventing racism, a colourful brochure designed to invite newcomers to visit their local family resource centre, and links to other resources”.
Resource kits will be available on welcomehere.ca as of April 1/08. For more information, welcomehere@frp.ca.
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Canadian Council for Refugees on proposed amendments to IRPA
The Canadian Council on Refugees (CCR) finds fault with proposed amendments to the IRPA tabled by the federal government (as part of the Budget bill, C-50) on March 14/08. In particular, the impact on children with regard to changes in Canada’s obligations to consider humanitarian applications from outside of Canada: From today’s CCR press release:
“These amendments take away the right to have an application for humanitarian consideration examined, even though this is the only option under the immigration law for many people, including some children seeking to be reunited with their parents,” said Elizabeth McWeeny, President of the Canadian Council for Refugees. “Again and again when we point out gaps in the immigration law, Citizenship and Immigration Canada tells us that humanitarian and compassionate applications are the recourse. What kind of a recourse will it be, if visa officers can simply discard the application without even examining it?”
The following are two situations where the law does not provide children with a right to family reunification and humanitarian and compassionate applications are the only recourse:- Under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, separated refugee children in Canada cannot apply for family reunification with their parents and siblings who are outside Canada. The only way for these children to be reunited with their parents and siblings is through humanitarian and compassionate consideration.
- The excluded family member rule (Regulation 117(9)(d)) keeps many children unfairly separated from their parents. The only way for affected families to explain why they should be able to reunite in Canada is through a humanitarian and compassionate application.
“Canada has an obligation, under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to consider the best interests of the child in any decision taken affecting a child. This obligation is reflected in the provisions in the Act relating to humanitarian and compassionate applications (section 25). With the proposed amendment, visa officers would no longer be required to consider the best interests of the child”.