Community Solidarity Manitoba urges governments to protect asylum seekers and reject militarism

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Community Solidarity Manitoba Statement
On the rise of anti-immigrant policies and increasing militarization in Manitoba and Canada

January 27, 2025

Community Solidarity Manitoba opposes all federal and provincial policies that promote racism and militarization. The federal government’s 20% cut to immigration levels panders to anti-immigrant views in advance of a federal election, which is dangerously stoking rising levels of racism. Instead of addressing the cost-of-living crisis, the federal government has chosen to scapegoat migrants and avoid their responsibility for this issue.

By allowing 2.3 million work permits to expire in the next two years, the federal government is demonstrating that it views migrants as a disposable workforce which can be turned on and off like a faucet, rather than as people with needs for security and stability who have responsibilities to families and communities both here and abroad.

Reducing immigration levels harms the economy. Migrants fill vital roles in health care, agriculture, transportation and technology. International students alone contributed $31 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2022. Despite these significant contributions, the government continues to deny the majority of migrants access to permanent resident status, which provides them with their basic rights in Canada. A 2024 U.N. report describes Canada’s temporary foreign worker program as “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.”

Manitoba’s provincial government is also failing to adequately support migrants. One example of this is their unfulfilled election promise to restore health care coverage for international students. Each day that passes without equal access to public health care leads to unnecessary suffering, illness, financial hardship, and even death.

Provincial and federal governments of all stripes are responsible for the housing crisis due to decades of inaction. They have failed to invest in social housing, have not implemented effective rent control policies, and instead rely on the private market. These are the real causes of the housing crisis, not migrants, who are used as convenient scapegoats.

Community Solidarity Manitoba calls on the federal and provincial governments to uphold their obligations under international law to protect individuals and families seeking asylum.  Pouring billions of dollars into border security and military spending raises the risk of racial profiling at the border. This situation forces many migrants with precarious status to live in the shadows, trapped in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. It has also led to injuries and even death at irregular border crossing points.

Militarization is on the rise in Canada. Our multi-billion dollar military budgets destroy the environment while robbing people of their rights to basic needs. Indigenous and migrant communities are hit the hardest. Many migrants seeking work and refuge in Canada have been forced from their homelands in part due to Canadian foreign military policy. This was a reality even before Canada’s recent astronomical increase in its NATO commitment— nearly tripling military spending by 2032.

Canada’s military spending contributes to conflicts around the world, including the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel. The government of Manitoba shamefully awarded $17 million in grants and loans to Magellan Aerospace, one of Canada’s largest producers of F35 fighter jet parts which Israel is using to bomb civilians in Gaza.

All levels of government, including Premier Kinew and the provincial NDP government, along with many institutions across the country, have been actively silent in an ongoing genocide, perpetuating anti-Palestinian racism, and avoiding accountability for respecting the human rights of Palestinians both here and in Palestine.

Community Solidarity Manitoba is committed to unity among a diverse and multi-racial working class across borders. The forces that displace people, drive migration, and commit genocides are also those that threaten the livelihoods of working people and have robbed Indigenous peoples of their lands here on Turtle Island and around the world. Our path is clear: we must link our struggles, build solidarity and power, oppose the forces against our very humanity, and create the possibility for a just world.

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