Detention centers have been a hot migration topic for many years. During the summer of 2018, CBC news by Petra Molnar and Stephanie J. Silverman came out with an article stating multiple reasons why Canada should eradicate detention centers that involve about thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants incarcerated every year. Some of the concerns that were mentioned were indefinite prison sentence, family separation, taxpayer’s concerns, an insufficient amount of lawyers defending migrants, and false accusations of migrants.
Rationale:
I chose this article because in one of my class facilitations in my fourth year of university, I focused on detention centers in Canada. Humans who cross borders are mainly in two different socioeconomics because either one is well-educated or one has lost their home due to climate change or due to warzones. Therefore, I wanted to further look into the statistics and wanted to pose the specific ongoing issues within these places. According to 2017 statistics, there have been approximately around 8000 detainees who on the average spend 19.5 days behind bars (Molnar and Silverman, 2018). Additionally, it costs about $225 per day to hold detainees which are coming from taxpayers. These results show that there needs a petition to eradicate unsafe detention center procedures and the fear that is brought upon migrants or refugees. It is unfortunate to see many families living in the shadows of captivity where many families have been broken apart. I am hoping that others will read this article to open up a discussion to stop the current discriminatory laws from taking place.
Keywords: migration, detention center, asylum seekers
Author: Border Crossing Feminist
As the comment and article states, I too did not know much about detention centers here in Canada when it came to holding immigrants and asylum seekers. When reading the article that was posted here and the first comment, I can’t be think of how this issue has been kept in the dark. As we saw in the article written by the star, with the title of “Canada slammed for culture of secrecy over immigration detention”.
I have to thank Harsha Walia and her book Undoing border imperialism to help me again a better idea about this topic. As through the book, on the twelve page under “why no one illegal” we are introduced to the work of No one…
Just like the article says, I too did not know that detention centers in Canada took in asylum-seekers and migrants until taking this course. When I came to understand the (pardon my informality, but) messed up truth that non-criminals are being incarcerated, I wondered why and how this is not being seriously addressed in political and academic spaces. Reading Border Crossing Feminists’ entry and news resource, I was able to not only gain better insight of the numerous problems associated with Canadian detention centers holding migrants and asylum-seekers, but also that the cause is in serious need of more public attention. For me, this article points to every reason why it makes zero sense that migrant families are detained i…