My name is Avvy Go, and I'm the clinic director of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. With me is Jin Chien, who is our staff lawyer. We will be co-presenting this afternoon.
We are a community-based organization that provides free legal services to low-income members of the Chinese and Southeast Asian communities in Ontario. We thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to talk about the issue of migration this afternoon. We will be focusing on three specific groups of migrants: refugees, migrant workers and family class immigrants.
Ms. Chien will talk about refugees and migrant workers, and I'll deal with the family class immigrants.
I'll begin our presentation with three general comments that sort of align with what Professor Donnelly has just said.
First of all, many so-called voluntary migrants are forced to leave their home countries due to reasons beyond their control. Climate change, economic and social disparities, and the absence of democracy and the rule of law are just some factors that contribute to the increase in global migration. From our point of view, the categorization of non-refugees as voluntary migrants can therefore be misleading.
Second, in the face of the rise of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric in the U.S. and Canada, how we talk about migration matters. We should avoid using divisive language that creates false dichotomies between immigrants and refugees and perpetuates an unfounded sense of crisis, which in turn inflames anti-refugee sentiment and encourages discriminatory behaviour.
Accordingly, we are calling on the government, through this committee, to change the narrative on migration by highlighting the positive obligation of Canada towards refugees, the critical role migrants have played in building our nation and the value of their contributions in shaping our collective future.
Third, in recognition of the fact that persons of colour represent an increasingly large proportion of immigrants across all classes, we ask the government, through the committee, to adopt racial and gender-equity lenses to evaluate the impacts of all immigration laws and policies on racialized communities.