On Tuesday, the City of Toronto celebrated Undocumented Residents Day with a panel of radical pro-illegal immigration activists.
Undocumented Residents Day is part of a years-long concerted effort to make Toronto a “sanctuary city” for people who overstay their visas or arrive in Canada illegally, first launched by former mayor John Tory in 2017.
So-called undocumented residents are mostly those who have come to Canada legally but continue to remain in Canada after their legal status expires. They also include those who entered Canada illegally.
To celebrate illegal immigration, the City of Toronto organized an event at the city council chambers in their honour and to discuss how activists can urge the federal and provincial governments to accommodate them in Canada.
The panel featured co-director of the FCJ Refugee Centre Loly Rico, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change Syed Hussan, and city bureaucrat and social justice advocate Denise Andrea Campbell.
The three discussed how federal, provincial, and municipal governments can further extend government entitlements to illegal immigrants and how they can influence public opinion to achieve their goals.
Hussan says that he would like to see the federal government grant illegal immigrants permanent residency, as has been done by the European Union and the United States.
“People stay here undocumented because there is nothing better, but that does not make this good,” said Hussan.
“And so what has been happening around the world and in Canada is a campaign for regularization, which is to say that undocumented people should be able to get permanent residency.”
Hussan says that despite promises made by the Trudeau government in the past to grant legal status to illegal immigrants, the feds need to make tangible steps to achieve that goal.
“Because of our collective effort, the federal government in December 2021 promised Canada a regularization program. And yet we sit here in August 2024 where this program is not being brought in,” said Hussan
“But regularization is possible, its been promised in this mandate, there’s still at least 14 more months of a Trudeau government and I think we can collectively win the rights of undocumented people as we have been fighting for for decades.”
The panelists spent a great deal of time lamenting the current state of Canada’s immigration system for being too strict, while also blaming racism and white supremacy for the problems with the immigration system.
Campbell lamented the fact that Toronto and other municipalities do not have the power to confer legal status to illegal immigrants.
“At the end of the day…the city doesn’t have the ability to confer status onto people. We’d love to be able to – well I, Densie would love to be able to do that. I think the city would love to be able to do that, I think that’s consistent with council policy. I think I can say that definitively,” said Campbell through laughter.
Hussan bemoaned Canada’s media coverage of the affordability crisis and its link to immigration, claiming that there is no connection between the two.
Hussen claims that the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated that the affordability crisis is driven by bankers and bosses and not working class migrants.
“We understand suddenly who is actually essential and it is not the bankers and it is not the bosses, it is working class people,” said Hussan.
“Now fast forward to the present. And what do we hear? We hear that those migrants that we were celebrating are responsible for that housing crisis. How is it that within four years we have all forgotten about the billionaires, the bosses and the bankers and suddenly the people who are responsible are the people who are supposed to be our champions.”
Hussan says that the media’s strategy is to blame immigrants for the affordability crisis instead of blaming austerity and a lack of government “investment” for the crisis.
“The promise of shutting down the border isn’t going to fix the economy, it is going to be the bankers, the billionaires, and the bosses responsible. This is our moment!”
Hussan says that he is not only concerned with liberalizing Canada’s immigration system but that he is also concerned with a variety of other left-wing priorities like climate change and queer rights.
“It isn’t just about migrants. You can’t win on anything, you can’t win on any working class issue, you can’t win on women’s issues, on queer issues, on any issue when people believe that the only problem is migrants and immigrants,” said Hussan.
“This distraction serves to limit our collective power. You can’t win action on climate change right now because people are out there thinking the biggest problem is immigration.”
