By Nandita Sharma

We are being told that in the "war on terrorism", a "North American perimeter" needs to be set up. Elected officials in Canada and the US, media pundits and recent polls show support for the creation of such a zone. What does this actually mean? What would its effects be? Will it increase people's security? Or is it a carefully timed response to exploit the panic that "our borders are out of control"? While much remains unsaid, one thing we can be sure of is the power to shape immigration and refugee policy will rest with the American government. The agenda for any "North American perimeter" will be set in Washington, and the effects on immigrants and refugees in Canada will be devastating.

This becomes clear if we take another look at Bill C-11 - the proposed amendment to the Canadian Immigration Act - currently before the Senate for final changes and approval. A "North American perimeter" is not a big leap from the changes proposed in Bill C-11. In process before September 11th, Bill C-11 moves Canadian immigration policy more in line with the US. Some elements of this Bill are:

1. Increased money, resources and international cooperation on "interdiction." This means stopping people from ever reaching Canada and being able to apply for refugee status.
2. Ability to return people to countries where they will be persecuted or tortured, in violation of Canada's international human rights obligations.
3. Expansion of powers of detention (e.g. automatic detention for anyone arriving with the aid of smugglers).
4. Possibility of life sentences to those convicted of smuggling people into Canada, even if they were motivated by humanitarian concerns (someone who helps family members flee persecution can be denied access to a refugee hearing or lose permanent residence).
5. Denying people convicted of "serious" crimes from applying for refugee or immigration status. People can also be refused entry solely on the basis of association.
6. Total absence of legislative definition for the terms "terrorism", "membership in a terrorist organization" and "security of Canada," leaving refugees and immigrants susceptible to unprincipled, arbitrary and even unconstitutional decision making without opportunities for meaningful appeal.
7. Use of the vague terminology of "being a danger to the security of Canada" as a basis for inadmissibility, allowing the minister, instead of the courts, to determine what this means. On the other hand, there is no language in Bill C-11 that specifically protects fundamental rights such as lawful advocacy, protest or dissent.
8. Creation of a "permanent resident card" which will allow the government to more closely monitor, track and deport permanent residents.
9. Creation of "new inadmissibility clauses" which will effectively bar those who, for whatever reason, had to misrepresent their situation on an immigration application.
10. Increased power of the government to deport those with permanent residence status.

Advocates for immigrants and refugees are severely critical of Bill C-11 and its more restrictive, more punitive, more irresponsible immigration and refugee policy. Bill C-11 takes many long fought for rights away from refugees and immigrants, and is being pushed quickly through Parliament. And it represents the setting of a US-style immigration and refugee policy.

US immigration and refugee policy is among the most "political" in the world: instead of admitting refugees based on their fears of persecution, the US has historically only admitted refugees from countries defined as the "enemy" while denying entry to those from countries (and dictatorships) friendly to the US. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan was until September 11th considered a "friendly" dictatorship. At the same time that the US was giving the Taliban hundreds of millions of dollars, it was refusing to accept many Afghan refugees fleeing the horrors of fundamentalism. This has left millions of Afghan refugees stranded and left to die in refugee camps without adequate food, shelter, clothing or medical attention.

Bill C-11 further politicizes Canada's immigration and refugee policies. It forces us to side with repressive regimes the world over, since any political activist jailed by a dictator can be classified as a "criminal" or "terrorist", and refused entry. We can see signs of this happening already. Recently, several people from South Africa were denied entry into Canada because of actions they had taken to resist apartheid.

Despite these highly regressive changes, some claim Bill C-11 is too lenient. One recent Vancouver Sun editorial (Oct.3, 2001) demanded the federal government invoke the "notwithstanding clause" to bypass the Canadian constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The editor argued that based on mere suspicion of being a "terrorist", refugee claimants should be stripped of their rights to appeal negative decisions and be immediately deported to countries where they will surely face torture, persecution and death. This happens daily in the US right now.

Trends set at the US/Mexico border - and the daily oppression that occurs along it - set the stage for what a "North American perimeter" will look like. As will happen with Canada, at the US/Mexico border the US government determines what happens.

Over the last decade, high steel fences, razor wire, flooded tunnels and snipers authorized to shoot undocumented migrants have been installed along the US/Mexico border. The US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has more armed agents with arrest powers than any other federal agency in the US. Over 9,000 armed border patrol agents work the US side of the US/Mexico border.

The US Pentagon has encouraged a deep militarization of this border. Josˇ Palafox, a California-based social activist working with migrants, reports this has meant the use of "excess" military equipment, "including Blackhawk helicopters, heat sensors, night vision telescopes and electronic intrusion detection devices. The Border Patrol has also acquired new stadium-style klieg lights and computerized fingerprinting equipment." The financial cost? US $4.2 billion every year.

Yet, the movement of people from Mexico to the US has not stopped. Why? Because the very conditions that spawn their desperate bid for entry into the US - war, poverty, unemployment, destruction of the rural economy, patriarchal violence against women and forced evictions by government or other militarized forces - are further fuelled by US (and Canadian) policies on free trade and western-style "development". People continue to cross one of the most heavily armed borders in the world despite the costs. Last year over 400 people died trying to cross the southwestern part of the US/Mexican border alone.

Before September 11th, over 150 million people every year had to leave their homes in search of safety and a livelihood. This crisis in international migration will only deepen with the "war on terrorism". As the bombs struck on October 6th, thousands of Afghans fled their farms, their homes, their jobs for the cover of their mountains. They join the other hundreds of thousands who had already tried to escape into Pakistan. Elsewhere - in the occupied territories of the Palestinians, in Kashmir, in Iraq - many more people live daily with the terror of dislocation. The "war on terrorism" will increase this. It will also increase the numbers of people crossing international borders, including the number of people seeking refuge in Canada.

The US and Canadian governments' response to this crisis has been somewhat contradictory. They want to keep the border open to the movement of goods and US and Canadian citizens (those not targeted by racial profiling practices that criminalize people of colour), but they want to create a "magic zone" where everyone and everything else cannot cross. Yet US, Canadian and Mexican authorities know this is impossible.

The call for a "North American perimeter" is only ideological double-speak designed to create a panic about "border control". What it will actually accomplish is to create conditions whereby the millions of people already displaced and the millions more who will be displaced by the "war on terrorism" will never be able to call North America home - they will never be able to claim landed immigrant status, become permanent residents and eventually citizens. Instead, they will be left to fend for themselves as undocumented peoples struggling to work in job ghettos, to live in squalid conditions, to forego any health care. Their children will be denied schooling and they will be easy targets for police forces (like the "illegal immigrant squad" set up by the Ontario government).

What will this "North American perimeter" have accomplished then? More vulnerability, abuse and terror in the lives of those who are already the world's most vulnerable, most abused and most terrorized people.

Panicked cries for "border control" do not stop the movement of people. They only make people much more vulnerable to the demands of employers, landlords and thugs once they reach the other side. Little wonder, then, that business groups in Canada are lining up in support of a "North American perimeter".

If we have learned anything from the experiences of the US/Mexico border, we know that the lives of those demanding "order at the border" will also not be made more secure. There, an increased military presence and more surveillance and detention powers for the state has resulted in exactly the opposite: more violence, fear, insecurity and more terror. The vulnerability of migrants does nothing to increase anyone's security. It only creates a situation where more money is spent, more people are armed, more war machinery is used and where terror becomes the everyday experience of millions of people worldwide.

It is not too late to stop Bill C-11. Call members of the Senate and tell them what you think of this bill and what you think of the proposed amendments to this bill (such as a "perimeter" idea) that many Senators feel they are being pressured to make.