“So, so, so, solidarité ! Avec, avec, avec les sans papiers!”
On March 7, around 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Montreal City Hall for a rally demanding that Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada make Montreal a sanctuary city. According to Solidarité sans frontières—one of the organizations that held the rally—making Montreal a sanctuary city would allow everyone in the community to feel protected regardless of their legal status. This includes increasing undocumented immigrants and foreign workers’ accessibility to housing, employment, healthcare, and social aid.
The rally started at 2:00 p.m. when Samira Jasmin, a representative from Solidarité sans frontières, explained the need for Montreal to become a sanctuary city.
“In Montreal, tens of thousands of residents live and work in fear of being arrested and deprived of their dignity and human rights,” Jasmin said. “They do not have any political, economic, or social rights. They suffer from violence and exploitation in their workplaces as much as in their own homes.”
Jasmin then posed a question to the Martinez Ferrada government.
“What have you done to represent and defend the rights of immigrants of precarious status, […] their right to live and exist, as well as their most fundamental rights?”
The next speaker was a representative from Women of Diverse Origins. In her speech, she read out a letter her colleague Dolores Chew wrote to Martinez Ferrada.
“Soraya, you are familiar with how people flee persecution, violence, and torture in our countries of origin and come here to build lives in peace and security,” she said. “The Head Tax imposed on Chinese migrants, the Continuous Journey Clause that impacted migrants mostly from the Punjab in India, the exclusion from voting rights, and on and on [….] The precarity of asylum seekers is part of a historical trajectory in Canada of laws that are put in place to exclude racialized populations.”
The representative also emphasized the need for immediate action in order to protect the city’s most vulnerable.
“On the eve of International Women’s Rights Day, we highlight the particularly critical situation of undocumented migrant women in precarious situations,” she said. “They are exposed to exploitation and abuse in their work environments [….] Fighting for women’s rights also means ensuring that the most vulnerable among us have access to services and resources. Soraya, sanctuary city now!”
A representative from the Defund the Police Coalition also gave a speech. The coalition, which comprises over 80 civil groups, aims to reduce the power and impunity of the Service de police de la ville de Montréal (SPVM) and the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA). They demanded that the Martinez Ferrada government shift the municipal budget’s priority to invest in services that support the Montreal community and its marginalized groups. The representative stressed that municipal politicians must shift away from exploiting migrant identities during political campaigning.
“The mayor of Montreal, a former migrant herself, has used this position to help her get elected in the municipal elections, while doing nothing for the migrant community,” the representative explained. “The weaponization of the migrant community to gain votes while standing idly by mass deportation and massive budget cuts of provincial support for migrants show how identity politics do not work [….] We are here to stand in solidarity with undocumented folks across Canada to demand the regularization of everyone and to demand that Montreal become a sanctuary city.”
The representative concluded her speech by emphasizing the policies that the Martinez Ferrada government must implement.
“Soraya Martinez Ferrada can prove that she cares about her constituents by doing three simple things,” she pointed out. “End the collaboration between the SPVM and CBSA. Ban arbitrary street checks, reduce the police budgets, and stop funding racial abuse and dystopian surveillance technologies. Use that money to fund social services that will help everyone, including undocumented folks.”
*All quotes were translated from French
