Border Control Politics as Technologies of Citizenship in Europe and North America

Abstract

In October 2009, 76 Tamils fleeing decades of civil war in Sri Lanka arrived off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, on the Ocean Lady. A year later, in August 2010, another boat carrying some 492 Tamil asylum seekers again arrived off the coast of British Columbia on the MV Sun Sea. Fearing that some might belong to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), listed as a terrorist organisation in Canada since 2006, these ‘boat arrivals’ galvanised the Canadian government to ‘get tough’ on irregular and uncontrolled migration. Despite heated opposition, in June 2011 the government of Canada quickly introduced ‘anti-smuggling’ legislation, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act, which was later rolled into an omnibus bill Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act that passed into law in June 2012. The anti-smuggling portion of this new legislation enables the government to create two classes of refugees by designating all those who arrive by boat en masse (including minors of 16 years and older) as ‘irregular arrivals’ and to detain irregular arrivals for up to a year as they wait for their refugee application to be processed. It also enables the government of Canada to deny those refugees designated as ‘irregular arrivals’ the right to apply for permanent residence for up to five years. During this time, this group of refugees may be prevented from travelling outside Canada or from sponsoring family members, all of which is contrary to both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international law.2