Category: Uncategorized

CADIW openly challenges immigration policy as racist, sexist, and exploitative, and helps make deportation a visible political issue.

CADIW, Black organizers, and anti-racist groups use the campaign to argue that women deemed good enough to work in Canada are good enough to stay.

CCR coordinates legal advocacy, lobbying, and public education across the country and creates lasting national infrastructure for refugee service organizations.

The organization challenges exploitation, fights deportations, pushes for labour protections, and demands status for migrant domestic workers.

Private sponsorship and public pressure play a key role in broadening the federal response to displacement from Southeast Asia.

They secure that victory through petitions, rallies, and lobbying led by Filipino domestic workers working with INTERCEDE and anti-Marcos activists.

The Supreme Court rules that refugee claimants are entitled to an oral hearing on their case where credibility is at issue, strengthening the legal basis for later organizing.

Similar sister organizations would emerge across the country over the following years.

Canada becomes the first country to issue official guidelines on women refugee claimants fearing gender-related persecution.

Formed after a near‑fatal neo‑Nazi skinhead attack on Tamil refugee Sivarajah Vinasithamby, TCAR brings together racialized communities and allies to confront racist violence, police inaction, and border controls as connected systems.

The Agricultural Labour Relations Act comes out of years of organizing and pressure, led especially by the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW).

Then the Harris government repeals the law that made that possible, shutting down collective bargaining rights, and setting up the next major legal battle over farmworker organizing.

The STCA continues to be fought against to this day.

The state response to the Fujian arrivals exposes how immigration detention can punish and exclude migrants instead of protecting rights.

The repeal delivers a concrete campaign victory, even though the fee remains in place for many other migrants.

Founded in 2000 by Filipino‑Canadian union organizers and allies, the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montréal provides popular education on labour rights, support for workplace struggles, and a space for organizing outside traditional unions, especially for immigrant and migrant workers.

Their organizing makes non-status struggles much more visible at a national level.

The case delivers a major legal win, even though it does not secure full union rights in practice.

The strike becomes a key turning point in modern migrant farmworker organizing in Ontario resulting in the formation of Justice for Migrant Workers – a leading migrant justice organization.

Demonstrations, sanctuary, and public pressure win temporary relief in some cases and keep deportation politics visible.

No One Is Illegal groups in several several cities help frame migration as a justice issue rooted in borders, criminalization, and inequality.

Solidarity Across Borders organizes against deportations, detention, double punishment, and exclusion while building a broader anti-border politics.

It sharpens demands for due process, appeal rights, and respect for sanctuary as a response to unjust deportation.

Church-based cases highlight the consequences of failed appeals and removals.

Launched in 2005, WAC is a workers centre that is a hub for low‑wage, racialized, and migrant workers facing unpaid wages, temp agency exploitation, and misclassification, leading fights for better wages and working conditions.

CCR, Amnesty International, and the Canadian Council of Churches bring that opposition into the courts.

The organization fights exploitation, insecure status, and exclusion from labour protections.

The Supreme Court rules the process unfair, forces legislative change, and exposes the harms of security-based immigration law.

After Canada denied her permanent residence because of cancer discovered in a second medical exam, public pressure helps force changes to the Live-in Caregiver Program.

Justicia for Migrant Workers, UFCW, and the Agriculture Workers Alliance, mobilize against deportation and the criminalization of migrant workers.

The People’s Commission Network challenges CSIS visits, secret interviews, and harassment, linking them to security‑certificate cases and deportations targeting Arab and Muslim communities.

Today, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change organizes migrants in Ontario and New Brunswick for employment and immigration rights.

The MV Ocean Lady (2009) and MV Sun Sea (2010) bring hundreds of Tamil refugees fleeing war in Sri Lanka to B.C. The federal response of mass detention and “smuggling” rhetoric sparks Tamil and refugee‑rights organizing against racist panics, security framing, and immigration detention.

Migrante Canada launches as a cross-country alliance of Filipino migrant organizations, rooted in caregivers, temporary foreign workers, and undocumented people. It connects migrant struggles to global labour export and becomes a key anchor in care work and migrant justice struggles.

The decision exposes the limits of litigation as a strategy, even after the earlier Dunmore win.

The Access Without Fear motion grows out of years of organizing around policing, immigration and access to service. Similar campaigns are organized in other cities, including Montreal.

His family, Justice for Migrant Workers, and allies keep pushing for an inquest and for equal treatment, refusing to let the case disappear.

End Immigration Detention Network is formed to oppose the use of provincial prisons for immigration and long-term detention.

The court finds the 2012 IFHP changes discriminatory and cruel – a major victory against status-based exclusion from care.

After the photo of three‑year‑old Syrian child Aylan (Alan) Kurdi circulates globally in 2015, people across Canada mobilize under “Refugees Welcome,” pressuring federal parties to increase Syrian resettlement and exposing how Canada’s refugee system remains selective and two‑tiered. This becomes a key factor in Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau becoming the prime minister.

They demand an end to incarceration in maximum security jails, generating renewed public attention to immigration imprisonment.

The caravan marked 50 years of SAWP by refusing the lie that this labour system is temporary. It made visible a system built on permanent work, temporary status, and employer control.

CCR and allies reopen litigation against the Safe Third Country Agreement, while migrant worker groups push for protections against abuse caused by employer-specific permits.

The UN Human Rights Committee rules that Canada violated her right to life and equality by excluding her from essential health care because of her status and calling on Canada to change its laws and compensate her.

MRN launches a shared platform that links status for all, racial justice, labour rights, and climate justice, coordinates national days of action, and quickly becomes the main vehicle pushing for a regularization program and status for all.

The Open Work Permit for Vulnerable Workers and the family violence Temporary Resident Permit reflect a partial acknowledgment of harms long identified by migrant workers and advocates.

Migrant Rights Network and allies link immigration status to public health, labour rights and essential work, and racial justice.

While the change is a response to a movement demand, the government frames it as a response to labour shortage.

Because the equality question remains unresolved, they continue the legal and political challenge.

The WSIAT rules that WSIB illegally reduced compensation, and WSIB later changes its approach.

It put one of the central legal levers of migrant worker unfreedom directly on trial.

Led by Justice for Migrant Workers, the case targets both forced dependence on a single employer and the state’s extraction of EI premiums from workers who are largely denied benefits.