Sept. 4, 2006: #1 Update AIDS Refugees & More

The mainstream media omitted the connection between the spokesman from FCJ Refugee Centre and No One Is Illegal in writing of the AIDS Refugees.

When the 137--or is it 150?--AIDS Conference attendees, most with AIDS, remained in Canada as "refugees", one of the spokesmen/activists quoted by the mainstream media was Francisco Rico-Ramirez--no more information provided except that he was identified with the FCJ Refugee Centre. I checked. At first, FCJ sounds like a Roman Catholic charity--read further. FCJ was taken over by refugees, in particular, Rico-Ramirez, the spokesman for refugees referred to in the article I posted Sept. 1 on AIDS Refugees. The Director, a refugee and his wife from El Salvador, and the staff at the FCJ Refugee Centre are involved in advocacy and connected to / advocating for the group No One Is Illegal.


Advocacy

FCJ Refugee Centre -- "a charitable foundation now dedicated to advocacy", 208 Oakwood Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M6E 2V4
www.fcjsisters.ca/refugeecentre/

Charitable Registration number: 869181062RR001
On May 4, 2005 FCJ Hamilton House Refugee Project changed its name to FCJ Refugee Centre. ... the elimination of the word “house” expresses that we no longer principally identify as a shelter, but are also involved in advocacy, assistance with settlement and public education.

FCJ
www.fcjsisters.ca/refugeecentre/whoweare.htm

Francisco Rico-Ramirez (Refugee Law Educator) and Loly Rico, fled El Salvador to come to Canada. Now, he is a Director of FCJ Refugee Centre.

Funding sources: various, including the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Social Fund ... The Maytree Foundation [see below] provided a grant to support this new program, called Refugee Help in Refugee Hands, which began in April 1997 with the full-time involvement of Francisco Rico-Martinez.

Formally trained as a lawyer and economist, Francisco has been committed to issues of social justice for as long as he can remember. Starting with work in human rights in El Salvador, then solidarity work in Europe, and now work in the field of Refugee Rights in Canada .... He takes very seriously the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights [....]

Francisco was the President of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) for 4 years. ... he is publicly recognized as somebody that can provide non-partisan expertise to governmental and non-governmental organizations alike. [.... Non-partisan expertise? Read on and see if there is any partisanship to what he and his group are advocating. ]

Due to the increasing number of non-status people [ illegal aliens ] in our caseload, Francisco is currently interested in their rights and struggles. He is participating in this June's March on Ottawa which seeks to draw attention to this issue and is prominently working to define the framework for the regularization of non-status people. ["No one is Illegal" See below.]

This group have Charitable Registration number: 869181062RR001 which means they collect charitable funding to influence governments to legalize illegal aliens.



FCJ Refugee Centre / No One Is Illegal - Four Demands!

Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants -- [and illegal aliens ] -- March on Ottawa: An op-ed piece by Heather Lash of the FCJ Refugee Centre, about the recent No One Is Illegal March on Ottawa., announced in a press release, June 16th , 2005.
www.ocasi.org/index.php?qid=754&catid=144

[....] A dozen or so refugee protection and advocacy groups, including No-One Is Illegal, have organized this march of over 200 kilometres, covered from June 18 th to the 25th. They have called their coalition Solidarity Across Borders , subtitled Resisting the War on Immigrants and Refugees.

They are taking four principal demands Immigration Minister [to] Joseph Volpe [2005], and in the process raising public consciousness around these four issues:

* The regularization of all non-status people The “invisible class” of people without citizenship, recognized documents or other legal status, are nevertheless living here – sometimes for years, establishing lives – and, vulnerable to exploitation in the workforce, are mostly poor and mostly living in anxious insecurity. Many of these people are rejected refugee claimants who have gone ‘underground', because they are too afraid to return home. Regularization would mean recognizing the human rights of these people: to get settled, to enjoy the basic protections of a state and access to its basic services.

* An end to deportations Deportation is carried out in ways that are at best, insensitive and at worst – if someone for example faces torture [or lie convincingly about it] in their country – deadly. People are often handcuffed and sometimes drugged for their removal; failed claimants are criminalized by this adversarial system. Obviously, both deportations and violations against non-status people would be significantly reduced by introducing an appeal process for rejected refugee claimants. [An African prostitute with AIDS can remain here for 10 years, receive drugs for her condition; yet there is a need for more appeals?]

* An end to detention for immigration reasons Migrants, refugees, workers with expired visas, and people that the authorities simply do not believe are legitimate visitors, are held in detention centres for indefinite periods of time. Detention is ordered at the personal discretion of individual immigration officers. Many detainees (whose numbers include children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups) are fleeing traumatic situations. In a scenario as confusing and scary as detention, the already daunting tasks of finding legal representation (and language services!) and getting your forms in on time, become impossibly compounded by the bail: often set very high, and often denied anyway.

* The abolition of security certificates The Canadian government can detain and deport non-citizens who are deemed security risks, without ever disclosing – to them or their lawyer - the allegations or the evidence against them. Currently, 100% of people held on certificate in Canada are Arab Muslims.

These demands are not unreasonable, nor even all that radical, considering even the United Nations Committee on Arbitrary Detention is “gravely concerned” that people detained under security certificates are denied the right to a fair hearing. Amnesty International has also expressed concern [....]

In all their promotional materials, Solidarity Across Borders describes itself as a “Montreal-area network of self-organized migrants refugees and immigrants, and their allies”. Non-refugees seeing themselves as allies rather than leaders in this struggle is certainly a step in the right direction. The way the march on Ottawa is thus framed expresses a strong anti-oppression stance, and an acknowledgement of the geopolitical realities that brought refugees here in the first place, realities that continue to define their experience once they are here.

No-One is Illegal – here with these fine allies – engages in events like this in the spirit of solidarity, and understands that refugee advocacy is not philanthropy, but an expression of the fundamental and universal justice on which we must build another world. As they say, it is possible. So even though the march is over, go to solidarityacrossborders.org for more information on the four demands, and spread the word.


If you check the solidarityacrossborders.org website, you will find a link to STATUS -- i.e. the following.

No-one is illegal!

STATUS is demanding that the government of Canada implements a program to allow all non-status immigrants illegal aliens living and working in Canada to apply for permanent resident status.
www.ocasi.org/status/index.asp

The Maytree Foundation , re: Alan Broadbent, Chairman

72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:KhTaZR6tjA4J:
www.triec.ca/membership/broadbent.htm
+Maytree+Foundation&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=10

[....] special focus on support programs for refugees and immigrants in Canada. In 1992, the Maytree Foundation established the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, an organization which Alan also chairs. In 2001, Maytree established the Tamarack Institute, a community development organization.

Alan is also Chairman and CEO of the Avana Capital Corporation, a private investment holding company. In support of its investment activities, [....] the C5 Initiative, which brings together the mayors and civil society leaders of Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal; and Ideas That Matter, a publication of progressive ideas concerning the public good. [Progressive? Whose public good? Which public?]

Alan holds several other positions including Chairman and CEO of Jamscor Inc., Chairman of Pace Integration, a Canadian technology company which operates globally designing large scale integrated smart card systems, and Chairman of The Philanthropic Initiative, the United States’ leading firm offering counsel on philanthropy to corporations and individuals. He is also a Director of the Tides Foundation (Canada), the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, the Literary Review of Canada, the Canadian Merit Scholarship Foundation, Happy Planet Foods, and the Agora Foundation.

Note: "offering counsel on philanthropy to corporations and individuals. He is also a Director of the Tides Foundation (Canada)"

Related: The Maytree Foundation (founded 1982) is funded by / partnered with The Atkinson Charitable Foundation -- the Joseph E. Atkinson Foundation (He was the publisher of The Toronto Star, running the newspaper from 1899 to 1948)



Related: FHTR week of April 17, 2006

April 21, 2006 More Stephen Lewis & the Global Guilt & Governance Gang: scroll to Google: GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP SEMINAR SERIES JANUARY to MARCH 2006 ... Stephen Lewis is the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, ... , 19 Apr 2006

April 19, 2006 A few items: scroll to Global Commission on International Migration -- The United Nations and US Immigration Policy -- "Self-righteous globalists preach that no human being is illegal." , Joseph Klein, April 11, 2006

April 17, 2006 Illegal Aliens



FHTR week of Feb. 26, 06 -- Are global taxes the best way to end poverty? -- Chirac -- guilt geld -- UN, NatPost, Mar. 1, 06
www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=
ef50ad6d-4d40-4690-a422-32f34a812b67

Another article from that week: What is the rationale for immigration numbers and is it justified?
www.immigrationwatchcanada.org
/index.php?&MMN_position=1:1

Man with HIV jailed 15 years for unsafe sex -- The moral of the story is ......... ?
www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=86fdb83c-f4bb-46bc-b4e4-25cbb45db9b7

At this point, you might consider scrolling down to: February 26, 2006
The Plan


What I see in Canada is a coalescing of leftists and globally connected leftist groups devoted to breaking down any legal attempts to maintain Canada's national borders and her security. The United Nations is usually hovering in the background, along with unions and other activist groups.







Thought provoking -- David Warren: Chestlessness -- re: courage in the face of Islamofascism , Aug. 30, 06
www.davidwarrenonline.com/

[....] Jean-François Revel: “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.”

At the time Revel said this, the enemy power was Soviet Communism. The intellectuals, the smart journalists, the fashionable academics, the smug urbane of all descriptions, were hardly pro-Communist. They were more ironical than that, they were “anti-anti-Communist”. Today they are anti-anti-Islamo-fascist. [....]

Search: Gamil Garbi (alias Marc Lépine)



President of Muslim group offers N. American perspective -- Canadian Ingrid Mattson, newly elected president of the Islamic Society of North America, North America's largest Muslim organization.
cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/
2006/09/03/1798491-cp.html

She converted to Islam in 1987, months after completing her undergraduate degree in philosophy at the University of Waterloo.

[....] lived in Pakistan for a time to work with refugee women [....]

How does she fit in with the "activists"?



Memory Lane: Iran

April 21, 2006 Updated: Nuclear Iran, A Q Khan, & a Canadian Connection?