hen Justin Trudeau ran for office in 2015,

one of his major platforms was an open-
arms approach to immigration. Liberals roundly
condemned the Harper Government's controversial
Bill C-24, which allowed the government to
revoke citizenship for dual citizens and those
eligible for dual citizenship if the citizens in
question were convicted of terrorism, treason,
espionage, and other betrayals of Canadian
trust. They also pledged to receive an ambitious
25,000 Syrian refugees over the next year.

“A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,”
said Trudeau in a debate that year.

The subject of immigration and refugee support
is as relevant and hotly contested now as it was
in 2015, if not more so, due in no small part to
the rise of a demagogue with a frighteningly
anti-immigration stance in the US. Images of
children in cages and families ripped apart at
the southern US border have been a staple of the
24-hour news cycle for the past several months.
According to the CBC at a press conference in
June, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said
of the crisis, “Obviously, anyone looking at the
human images would be very, very concerned.”

Frank Cohn, Executive Director of VAST
(Vancouver Association for the Survivors
of Torture), has seen the impact these
policies and the culture surrounding them
has had on migrants and refugees.

“We have a significant increase in people coming
here from the United States, and a significant
increase in people coming here who would be
going to the United States,” said Cohn in a phone
interview with the Other Press. “It’s not necessarily
a specific policy that drives people away, it’s

a change of environment. There’s a change in
culture in the US where a lot of really aggressive,
violent discrimination has been emboldened,

and where people living in small towns around
the US as immigrants and as undocumented
immigrants began to feel uncomfortable. Even

on the streets of New York City, people have
described that the attitudes towards them and their
lives have changed with the new administration
and the general culture around xenophobia.”

He also cited the removal of DACA (Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals) and the Temporary
Protected Status designation for Haiti as having

a direct impact on migration to Canada.

“We see a lot more Central Americans
coming here,” he said, “and Quebec
sees a lot more Haitians.”

With the horrific images coming out of the US

and the persistent threat of a fully-implemented
“Muslim ban,” Canada would appear to be a
far better, safer option. In a tweet last January,
Trudeau restated his dedication to an open-
arms policy in response to Trump’s ban:

“To those fleeing persecution, terror
& war, Canadians will welcome
you, regardless of your faith.”

That same year the Liberals implemented
Bill C-6, which repealed portions
of C-24, though not all of it.

Unfortunately, political promises on both a
federal and even a municipal level do not seem
to match with political action. According to

a report by the CBC in 2016, before C-24 was
adjusted, the Trudeau government employed

it to revoke citizenship at a “much higher rate”
than the Conservative government ever did.
Between November 2015 and August 2016, the
government used the law to make 184 revocation
decisions without legal hearings, with most of
these decisions resulting in a loss of citizenship.

“The Liberals criticized these provisions
when they were in opposition,” Laura Track
of the BC Civil Liberties Association told the
CBC that year. “They said they were going
to fix it. And yet they have been using it
even more than the Conservatives did.”

The City of Vancouver has also done some
flip-flopping on the subject of immigration,
specifically regarding the city’s potential status as
a “sanctuary city.” Though the City put forward
and adopted an “Access Without Fear” policy for
undocumented immigrants in 2016, hoping to
encourage access to municipal resources for those
without documentation, Councillor Geoff Meggs
was candid in his insistence that Vancouver should
not be counted as a sanctuary city while speaking
with the Early Edition on CBC Radio in 2017.

“We felt, and this is what the settlement and
newcomer services said as well, that we should not
oversell what is happening,” he said, explaining
that the city’s hands were often tied by federal law.

Even the “Access Without Fear” policy has
been largely criticized by advocates for asylum
seekers and undocumented immigrants,
especially after the policy was adopted by the
Vancouver Police Department this past July.

In a press release, Alejandra Lopez Bravo, a
member of Sanctuary Health, condemned the
new guidelines put forward by the VPD.

“The Vancouver Police Department should
not claim to provide ‘Access Without Fear,’ if

Seeking s

Is Vancouver doing e1
and undocumen

_ By Bex Peterson