No to the Deportations of International Students and Workers!
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle in Canada condemns and opposes the deportation of over 700 international students and workers.
The students came to the country on a student visa in 2018 based on a fake ‘offer letter’ provided by a fraudulent immigration consultant company in Jalandhar, India. When the students and workers applied for their permanent residency the Canadian immigration authorities rejected the previously accepted offer letter and have ordered the students to be removed from the country. This decision comes after granting them permits to work prior to the PR application. The country that ‘allowed’ them to work here and extracted labour from them is now forcibly removing them because of exploitative systems that are beyond the control of the student-workers.
Canada benefits from the labour of immigrants who are economic migrants, forced to leave their home countries due the economic exploitation and other conditions created by imperialist countries like Canada in the first place. Workers from the global south are a source of labour for the global capitalist class. Migrating to Canada is expensive and, in some cases, costs the student-worker a lifetime of family earnings and savings. We know this from the protests, agitations, actions, testimonies, demands, and letters from the people who are now facing deportation and actions against them.
The deportation, if it happens, will be another step against people arriving in Canada in line with the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the U.S. The STCA allows refugees and migrants to be deported within 14 days of arrival without due process, and other immigration laws make it impossible to travel safely. This forces migrants and refugees to take life-threatening passages to enter the country. These laws and policies are designed by the ruling class in countries like Canada to control and discipline people of the global south who are coming here to escape conditions created and maintained by imperialist countries like the U.S and Canada.
The migrant worker’s struggle and movement for granting permanent status that grants them access to Canada has been active and resilient in their demands for years now, especially after the treatment of workers during the pandemic. People’s agitation over the past few months has led to some gains including the inquiry and charges against the fraudulent immigrant consultants in India. Now, Canada must stop the deportation and all adversary action against the students and the workers.
This is not an isolated problem but connected to a larger system of labour exploitation, unsafe working conditions fraught with insecurity and precarity which keeps the labour force dispensable and unable to fight back. Only unity among the working-class can overturn and stop the on-going exploitation and ill-treatment of all workers in Canada.
ILPS in Canada stands in solidarity with international migrants, students and workers against all actions taken against them on the basis of their immigration status.