Today, as politicians in Ottawa issue hollow statements about “welcoming refugees” and celebrating Canada’s “humanitarian values,” we at the Immigrant Workers Centre refuse to join in their hypocrisy. World Refugee Day is not a celebration—it is a moment of mourning and rage.
While the government waves its diversity flag abroad, it continues to build a fortress at home. This year, the new government of Prime Minister Mark Carney—a former banker now managing the country like a hedge fund—has intensified the assault on migrants and refugees. With the Strong Borders Act, his administration has cemented Canada’s slide into a brutal, carceral model of immigration control.
Let’s be clear: This is not about “restoring order” or “fixing the system.” This is class war, waged on poor and racialized migrants for the benefit of capital and white supremacy.
What’s Really Behind These Attacks
The Carney government has followed the far-right playbook with chilling precision: manufacture panic about “too many asylum seekers,” blame refugees for economic instability, then propose authoritarian measures. The result?
- Asylum seekers who’ve lived and worked in Canada for over a year are now denied the right to a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board.
- They are funneled into a pre-removal risk assessment process, with lower approval rates and little transparency.
- Refugee admissions have been slashed by over 30%, even as global displacement hits record levels.
- Family reunification is in crisis, with wait times of up to three years and massive backlogs—especially in Quebec.
- Meanwhile, deportations are ramping up and immigration detention continues, including for children and survivors of trauma.
This is not administrative mismanagement. It is neoliberal border violence—a conscious strategy to criminalize migration, divide the working class, and sustain a disposable labour force without rights or permanence.
Refugees Are Not a Burden—Capitalism Is
The Carney government would have you believe that refugees are responsible for the housing crisis, overwhelmed hospitals, or strained public budgets.
But we know the truth: it is decades of austerity, speculation, and elite governance that have hollowed out our social systems—not the people fleeing bombs, floods, and foreign-backed dictatorships.
Canada welcomes the mining corporations, the arms dealers, and the imperial projects that cause displacement—but not the people displaced. It welcomes precarious workers, but not their families. It welcomes profits, not people.
Our Response: Organize, Resist, Abolish Borders
At the Immigrant Workers Centre, we do not plead for inclusion into a broken system. We demand its transformation. We support working-class migrants and refugees who are:
- Fighting deportations through direct action and solidarity networks;
- Organizing against wage theft and employer abuse;
- Demanding Status for All, regardless of origin or income;
- Calling for the abolition of CBSA and the end of immigration detention.
We build power from below, rooted in internationalist, anti-capitalist, and abolitionist principles.
On This Day: From Commemoration to Confrontation
So today, we do not simply remember—we rise.
We call on all workers—citizen and non-status, union and unorganized—to reject the scapegoating of refugees. We urge all community organizations, faith groups, and youth movements to link arms and fight back.
World Refugee Day must not become a corporate PR exercise or a charity event. It must become a day of mass resistance—against borders, against imperialism, against capitalism itself.
Status for All. End Deportations. Shut Down CBSA. Abolish Borders. Dismantle Fortress Canada.
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