Migrants, Know Your Rights

Rachel Bryce (4L JD/MGA)

 Photo:  https://twitter.com/IHRP_UofT/status/1362149934527520770

The International Human Rights Program (IHRP) has partnered with the Immigration Legal Committee (also known as No One Is Illegal Toronto), Butterfly (Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Network), and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty to create a collection of comprehensive legal education resources for migrants and immigration service providers. The Migrants Know Your Rights Guides cover everything from obtaining status in Canada to dealing with immigration detention and deportation. The Guides are the result of months of dedicated collaboration, community consultations, and thoughtful drafting and editing with countless hands on deck. In May 2020, this team released theMigrants Know Your Rights COVID ID edition. In February 2021, the IHRP published thefull Migrants Know Your Rights Guide on immigration arrest, detention, and deportation.

Co-editor-in-chief Rachel Bryce sat down with IHRP Clinic student Liam Turnbull (3L) to discuss his work on this project, his perspective on the impact of this Guide, and migrant rights in Canada. IHRP Research Associate Ashley Major provides context on the additional publications and larger goals of the project and partnership.

Rachel Bryce (RB): Let’s start with an introduction about your work with regards to the Migrants Know Your Rights Guide. Could you talk a bit about the background of the project and your participation?

Liam Turnbull (LT): I drafted a “Know Your Rights” Guide for migrants navigating Canada's immigration, detention, and deportation system. I started as an IHRP clinic student in January 2020, but the development of the Guide started in the summer of 2019. It was a pretty long process of drafting, editing, collaborating with community partners until we finally published it last month. We tried to get as many perspectives as possible to have a document that reflected the views, needs, and concerns of the communities that it is trying to support.

RB: What did the collaboration look like? Who was involved?

LT: Before I started drafting, Vincent Wong, who was with the IHRP before, developed a skeleton of the Guide based on a “Know Your Rights” guide by the Immigration Legal Committee, also called No One Is Illegal Toronto. He developed the skeleton through direct consultations with members of the migrant communities and with Butterfly, an organization that supports Asian migrant sex workers. When I joined the IHRP clinic, Vince and I, along with another Clinic student and Elene Lam, the Executive Director of Butterfly, started to discuss how to best proceed. It was decided that I would do the drafting for the deportation guide, the other student would focus on police powers and enforcement, and Vince and Elene would provide comments and edits. The Guide was drafted in a very collaborative way. Once the clinic work came to a close, we had drafted the first six chapters, and the last chapter was drafted by an Osgoode Hall student in the summer. I also helped edit the whole Guide and gather additional research. After the summer, we had more discussions with the IHRP and Ashley, incorporating comments from an external reviewer and the Immigration Legal Committee. Through all of that, we were able to publish it last month.

RB: And how do you see this Guide coming into practice?

LT: Fortunately, there are plans to translate this Guide into various languages. But it was very difficult to try to make the language easily understandable for people without a legal background. To resolve these potential barriers, we did a number of plain language edits through sharing the guide with people without a legal background. At the same time, we knew some parts of the guide were bound to have some legal terminology, so we always made sure to provide resources where it was difficult to elaborate. For example, when we discuss refugee claims, we highlight how it is an extremely complicated area and emphasize the need for refugee claimants to try to obtain legal advice or consult the community organizations outlined in the appendix.

Since the Guide is so detailed, we wanted to highlight that it would be particularly useful for immigration service providers. But we also tried to strike a balance where it could still be understandable for migrants themselves.

RB: Could you speak more to your experience on the project, and what you have taken away from spending this time collaborating and writing on migrant rights?

LT: The main takeaways would be to ensure that community members’ perspectives are directly taken into account when developing legal education materials, and to make sure that, as law students or legal professionals, we are not engaging in a top-down approach. I think movement lawyering builds on that approach, in which you are not “giving” a voice to community members; rather, you are supporting their goals and needs in the ways they want. Overall, what I will take from this experience is to always keep in mind the needs and concerns of the people you are serving, to never neglect their perspectives on how to support their causes, and to try to remedy injustices.

RB: What is your takeaway about the situation of migrant rights in Canada? For example, what needs to be done to improve the situation for migrants who are facing deportation? And who are detained in these immigration detention centers,often in atrocious conditions[1] ?

LT: That’s a difficult question. Internationally, Canada's immigration system is often touted as really progressive and one of the fairest. But as you noted, migrants are facing some atrocious conditions in Canada. And COVID-19 is only a further strain on the obstacles that the migrants are facing. I think there is definitely a need to reform how the system is enforced and how different laws and policies are implemented. There also, I think, needs to be a serious investigation on the conditions of immigration detention centres where the government actually embodies the international human rights standards that Canada strives to uphold. I think there also needs to be a serious conversation about the alternatives to immigration detention, particularly for children and families. We need to come up with solutions that uphold the dignity of migrants and ensure people are not treated like prisoners. Something that was stressed a lot in community consultations was that people cannot be illegal; sure, they might be here without status, but saying a person is illegal is problematic and does not respect their dignity. Throughout our guide, we tried to make sure we were highlighting the ways that the immigration system is unfair, while also stressing the need for additional action and organizing beyond just knowing your rights. Real changes and reform will require further mobilization, and it is great to see our community partners, Butterfly and the Immigration Legal Committee, taking on that fight.

RB:That is an excellent note to end on. There is momentum building off of this report and important work that continues to be done by the communities and with the communities to create significant change and hold Canada accountable to its international human rights obligations. Thank you very much for your time, Liam, and for the great work you have done with this team.

A final note from IHRP Research Associate, Ashley Major:

RB: Ashley, could you provide some final notes on the scope of this partnership, its deliverables, and what it means to work with these mobilizing organizations?

Ashley Major:

First off, I’d like to just say how proud I am of Liam and how grateful I am for all of his work. I was the Professor of the IHRP Clinic in Winter 2020, and the Migrants Guide was one of the four projects that the nine students in the class worked on. It’s so exciting and validating to see a Clinic Project turn into such an important resource. This truly was a collaborative effort across universities and community organisations. I’d like to shout out the entire team in addition to Liam: Vince Wong and Petra Molnar (Past IHRP); Sophia Fozdar (IHRP Clinic Student); Elene Lam (Butterfly); Macdonald Scott (No One is Illegal); Marissa Hum (Osgoode Summer Student); Lorraine Chuen (Graphic Designer); the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty; Prasanna Balasundaram (Editor, DLS), and the external reviewers and countless participants in our community consultations. Lastly, I’d like to thank the Law Foundation of Ontario for funding this work.

This project has several deliverables attached — it’s not just the one Guide. When COVID hit, the team pivoted to publishing a short Guide on the implications of Emergency Orders passed due to the pandemic. These orders gave more expansive powers to law enforcement officials to demand identification, which clearly had unique implications for non-status individuals. The team is now focusing on translating both Guides, creating flashcards of their takeaways in multiple languages, and offering training sessions, webinars and informational videos on the content for migrants and immigration service providers. The Law Foundation of Ontario has been incredibly supportive in helping us to adapt our Guides, training, and our timelines in the pandemic. I am confident that we will be able to meet our goals and our Guides will reach the community members who are in need.