Workers' Forum
congratulates all the workers and advocacy organizations such as
Migrant Rights Network and Migrante Canada who held successful actions
across Canada on the occasion of June 20, World Refugee Day, to once
again give voice to Canadians' demand for Status for All! -- for
refugees, students,
migrant workers and undocumented people. It is clear that it is thanks
to the workers who speak out and organize for the affirmation of the
rights of all that the truth of what happens in Canada becomes known
and together we can advance the fight for the rights of all.
Workers' Forum deeply
appreciates the stand taken by Migrante Canada that the call for full
and permanent immigration status is a call for an end to a system of
deadly racialized exclusion from rights, protections and dignity; that
the fight in defence of the rights of migrant workers is not simply a
fight to demand rights under
Canadian laws based on colonialism but a challenge to the violent and
unfair nature of this whole system; that we must join together and
demand that Canadian laws and policies do not force more people out of
their homes anywhere.
According to the United Nations World Migration Report 2020, there
were approximately 25.9 million refugees globally as of 2018.
Palestinians registered with United Nations Relief organizations
accounted for 5.5 million of that total. While 25.9 million is a large
number, it is less than 10 per cent of the estimated 272 million
international
migrants in the world in 2019. Out of a global population of 7.7
billion, it means one in every 30 people on earth is an international
migrant. Economic insecurity is the leading reason for people leave
their homes, in search of employment and stability. War, violence and
oppression is second to economic insecurity. This phenomenon of
hundreds
of millions compelled to become international migrants is clearly an
expression of a global social order that rains catastrophe down upon
the peoples of the world. This is the creation, out of economic
insecurity, war, violence and oppression, of a pool of workers to be
superexploited, and that superexploitation is cruelly being called
"mobility of
labour" which is considered a Charter Right in Canada and a fundamental
human right.
These
are living breathing human beings, with legitimate claims upon society
to affirm and guarantee their rights wherever they are, not just where
they were born. This situation is also the face of a new world in the
making, which is coming into being, of the workers of all lands who,
regardless of place of origin, exist as one working class in
whichever country they are living. Migrants, regardless of the status
imposed upon them, are part and parcel of the main force for humanizing
the social and natural environment. They are "essential workers" as we
have seen in Canada during the pandemic. It is in laying claim to that
which belongs to them by virtue of being human and advancing
the fight for the rights of all that societies will come into being
which uphold the rights of all.
In Canada, internal migration is also a significant problem. More
and more, workers are forced to leave their homes to find work elsewhere in
the country because their industrial and service sectors, their local
and regional economies have been wrecked by global narrow private
interests. We have to step up our work also on this important
issue.
We are one working class, one humanity, waging one struggle for the
rights of all and for a human-centred system everywhere that upholds
the rights and dignity of all human beings!
Sudbury, June 20, 2021
This article was published in
June 28, 2021 - No. 62
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08621.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
