Tamil Refugees: Undocumented Migrants

Keith Martin Dept: The Arizona and Fremont laws have since run into legal snags damn those checks and balances! , but elsewhere in the world, outsiders are being similarly targeted by states that want to thicken their borders -- even though these same states rely heavily on newcomers for labour. In France this month, police have been uprooting small camps of impoverished Roma migrants, giving them two options: leave voluntarily with government help, or get deported, according to Calgary Herald. Sound familiar? Those callers use the same fearful rhetoric -- " they'll take what's ours" -- that U.S. politicians employed to get their nutty anti-Hispanic laws off the ground and it's a disconcerting string of stories, to say the least. In April, Arizona passed a law cracking down on undocumented migrants, making it a crime for them to be in the state at all -- regardless of whether they're involved in criminal activity. Two months later, voters in Fremont, Neb., approved new rules forbidding local landlords and businesses from renting to or hiring undocumented workers. It would be comforting to believe Canada is immune from this creeping xenophobia. Yet we saw it after a ship arrived in B.C. earlier this month with almost 500 Tamil migrants from Sri Lanka. "Victoria residents angry at arrival of Tamil refugees," brayed a Vancouver headline. In the story, Liberal MP Keith Martin said his office had been flooded with callers who were "angry because they don't want the Tamil people to be let into Canada and they don't want them drawing from our social services." As reported in the news.
@t liberal mp, calgary herald