Community Forum on Responding to Changes to Immigration Policy: Supporting Non-Status, Refugee and Immigrant Women Survivors of Gender Violence

by Rosa Elena Arteaga, BWSS Manager of Direct Services and Clinical Practices

On November 15th 2013, Battered Women’s Support Services hosted a Community Forum on Responding to Changes to Immigration Policy, in partnership with The Migrant Mothers Project and YWCA Metro Vancouver. Over 50 front-line workers, counsellors, settlement workers, and community activists came together to learn and share knowledge. We reinforced our commitment to continue our collaboration and to increase our networks so we can affect change and attend to the inequalities that migrant women face within Canada’s economic, social, legal and political systems. Inequalities that, more than often, deny basic rights to migrant women and their families.

community forum Panelists Andrea Vollans, Legal Educator YWCA,  Metro Vancouver, Rupaleem Bhuyan, Assistant Professor Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Darla Tomeldan, Legal Advocate, West Coast Domestic Workers Association, Ai Li Lim, Executive Director and Staff Lawyer, West Coast Domestic Workers Association and Rosa Elena Arteaga, Manager of Direct Service and Clinical Practice, Battered Women’s Support Services discussed:

  • The many barriers that women and children with precarious immigration status face in Canada and how we can find safety and support for them
  • To learn how recent changes to immigration policy are impacting women and children
  • The growing number of mothers without legal status, many of whom have been victims of violence
  • How women’s and community organizations across the province are supporting migrant mothers by addressing the systemic oppression that women face

community forum

We were very excited to collaborate with the Migrant Mother’s Project, participatory action research project working with community based organizations in Toronto, Ontario to improve the lives of migrant women and their children. The Migrant Mothers Project explores how women with precarious immigration status in Canada seek safety and support from abuse for themselves and their children at times when accessing services is vital to their well-being.

With the aim of understanding women’s migration and gendered violence, first of all, we have to acknowledge that there is a war against girls and women all over the world. From the moment a woman is born and her gender is defined as female, she will be oppressed and discriminated against. Migrant women flee from their countries for many reasons and one of the main reasons is the dismantling of their land. “Women play a significant role in agriculture, the world over. About 70% of the agricultural workers, 80% of food producers, and 10% of those who process basic foodstuffs are women and they also undertake 60 to 90% of the rural marketing; thus making up more than two-third of the workforce in agricultural production.*” Colonization, globalization and the domination of natural resources have taken away women’s land ownership, access to and control over their own land.

Furthermore, force migration is prompted by women’s experiences of gender violence and a broad spectrum of violence that girls and women face through their lives, which includes gender oppression, gender persecution, political persecution, femicide, war, economic violence and the impacts of colonization and globalization.

Women are continually forced to leave their land and migrate to a foreign country where they will be discriminated against based on their social location. Racialized and marginalized migrant women face the most oppressive and unsafe alternatives to flee from their countries and they, are not just simply allowed to enter Canada, they are screened and chosen based on the immigration laws and the policies implemented by the current governmental administration.

Once a migrant woman makes it into Canada, she might have been trafficked-or she might have come as a refugee claimant, through sponsorship, on visitor’s visa, under temporary work permit or undocumented, among other alternatives.  Her immigration status will play a huge role on the level of barriers and oppression that she will face as well as the services available to her. Many migrant girls and women will continue experiencing all forms of violence such as physical, emotional, verbal, and sexual abuse from intimate partners, family members or extended family. The process of migration and a precarious immigration status makes girls and women more vulnerable to experience further violence, by the state, by employers, and within their relationships.

With this in mind, we, at Battered Women Support Services support migrant women with precarious immigration status, non-status, refugee claimants and permanent residents who have or are experiencing violence. We are strongly committed to understanding and recognizing that migrant women don’t “just come” to Canada, migrant women flee from their countries under extreme circumstances and with an immense need for support to overcome the impacts of gendered violence, the impact of migration and the complex process of adaptation.  We have taken many steps to ensure that we provide the appropriate support but also that we affect systemic change.

 Rosa Elena Arteaga

We provide support to all migrant girls and women who access our services. Through our feminist, intersectional and decolonizing approach, we recognize that migrant women deal with shared “cultural” as well as individual and unique experiences. This acknowledgment of the collective and individual needs requires caring and compassionate assistance and support. In our work supporting migrant women, we walk along side each woman with an understanding that migrant women face huge social isolation and many structural barriers related to their precarious status and social location.

Our specialized services include but are not limited to:

  1.  Assistance navigating the legal system,
  2.  Including education and information about the Canadian legal system,
  3.  Assistance to access legal support including referrals to lawyers from our selected list of lawyers,
  4. Accompaniment and support in order to attend refugee hearings,
  5. Assistance to access basic supports such as food/clothing/furniture, health services, shelters and transition houses, advocacy and support to obtain social assistance, education,
  6. Information and support about child protection and parenting,
  7. Language specific counselling and support groups, assistance and
  8. Advocacy to apply for social housing.

In our experience, migrant women have always faced structural barriers and we have taken action to address those barriers at systemic and individual level. In 2011, we responded to the Balanced Refugee Reform Act (Bill C-11) and exposed the impacts that those changes were going to have on refugee women. In Gender Persecution and Refugee Law in Canada written by Lobat Sadrehashemi, we expressed our concern about making more difficult for women fleeing gender-related persecution to be able to make their stories understood by decision-makers at the Immigration Refugee Board (IRB). We think that there will be many women who slip through the cracks, who do not have access to legal counsel. The current changes on the immigration policies have only increased the structural barriers. These barriers are putting migrant women at risk and depending on an immigration status; they are limited in their ability to access basic services such as health services, income assistance, legal support, and safe shelter. Furthermore, it will limit their right to protection because many migrant women would not call the police and expose the violence they are experiencing for fear of deportation.

We strongly believe that continued access to a full range of programs such as services offered by Battered Women’s Support Services and a strong collaboration among service providers, at municipal, provincial, national and international level, is vital to migrant women’s capacity to overcome the impact of gendered violence, forced migration and adaptation.

http://www.wikigender.org/index.php/Women_and_Agriculture

 

Last year, Battered Women’s Support Services responded to over 10,000 crisis calls from women and girls to get help and end violence. We could not provide this essential support without your contribution.

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Farsi Speaking Women Focus Group

What you think matters to us

Are you a Farsi-speaking woman? Do you want to help other women in your own community? Are you willing to share your thoughts and opinions with us or to educate and train yourself on the following topics?

  • Intimate relationship concerns
  • Canadian Legal system (Family Law, Criminal Law)
  • Available community resources

If so, please contact Marjaneh to register for our focus group meeting at 604-687-1867 ext: 323 E: marjaneh@bwss.org

This focus group is made to address the needs of Farsi-speaking women. Your input, comments, and your knowledge are extremely important to us. By taking part in this meeting and informing us about your learning needs and your main areas of concerns, we would be able to design and provide a series of specialized workshops for immigrant Farsi-Speaking women. Please keep posted!

 
Location:

IRANIAN EDUCATORS SOCIETY FOR FAMILIES

#104, 1590 BELLEVUE AVENUE WEST

VANCOUVER, BC, V7V 1A7

Date:

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22nd 2013

10AM – 12PM

To read our resources in Farsi, please visit below links:

Farsi Toolkit for Women working with Lawyers

Persian Version of “When Battered Women Are Arrested”

To download the poster, please visit here.

To download the poster, please visit here.

 

 

Canadian immigration changes force women to stay with sponsoring spouse for two years

Margaret Scott/NewsArt
Debbie Douglas, Avvy Go and Sarah Blackstock

Ask just about any woman in this country if she or a woman she knows has experienced violence, and the answer will be “yes.”

And yet, for the most part, the policies and public discourse of this country imply violence against women in Canada is no big deal.

But violence against women is a big deal, traumatizing thousands of women in this country and profoundly impacting their lives. Every six days a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner, and every day more than 3,000 women are living in emergency shelters to escape domestic violence. Twelve per cent of all violent crime in Canada or 40,000 arrests result from domestic violence each year, although only 22 per cent of all domestic violence incidents are reported to the police.

Such is the current state of domestic violence against women in Canada.

If the Canadian government were to pass a law today requiring all Canadians with a spouse to stay in that relationship for two years before they would be eligible to, say, file for separation or divorce, many Canadians would be outraged. Women’s rights advocates would decry such a draconian measure as it would effectively trap women in abusive relationships.

Yet this is precisely what the government has chosen to do, albeit to a smaller yet extremely vulnerable group.

As of Oct. 25, 2012, a new regulation imposes a two-year condition on all permanent residents who come to Canada as a sponsored spouse. The regulation applies to all sponsored spouses who at the time of the sponsorship application have resided for two years or less with their sponsors, and do not have any children in common. Once they arrive in Canada, the sponsored spouse must continue to cohabit with her sponsor in a conjugal relationship for at least two years, or risk losing her permanent resident status and ultimately be deported.

Prior to the passage of this regulation, women’s rights advocates and immigrant organizations warned federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney that this rule would endanger the lives of women in abusive relationships, many of whom would be too ashamed and too afraid to speak out for fear of losing their immigration status. Nevertheless, the minister passed the regulation, while putting in place an “exemption” from the two-year condition for those who could prove they are subject to abuse or neglect.

But as one can deduce from the serious under-reporting of domestic violence incidents, fleeing from abuse is not as easy as picking up the phone and calling the police. The fear, the shame, the lack of income and lack of a place to go are significant obstacles faced by many women experiencing violence. Add risk of deportation to that list and surely one can appreciate the enormous barriers faced by abused sponsored immigrant women.

And then they have to prove the abuse occurred. In a culture that is still hesitant to acknowledge the prevalence of violence against women, this is rarely easy. In a society that is increasingly xenophobic and concerned about outsiders looking for a free ride, this might prove impossible.

Even without the conditional visa, many immigrant women are forced to remain in abusive relationships.

Recall the case of Rona Amir Mohammad, the first wife of Montreal’s Mohammad Shafia. She came to Canada on a visa as a domestic servant of the family and found herself trapped in an abusive marriage. With the renewal of the visa hanging over her head and at the mercy of the Shafia family, Rona was too afraid to flee. She ended up becoming one of the murder victims of Shafia, who along with his son drowned Rona and his own daughters.

The government has justified the new regulation in the name of curbing “marriage fraud” or “marriage of convenience” without offering evidence of the prevalence of these problems. According to the Canadian Border Services Agency, about 120 cases a year are referred to removal proceedings on suspected misrepresentation relating to spousal sponsorship. Even if all 120 cases are found to involve marriage fraud, which is highly unlikely, it still does not justify amending the law and putting the lives of thousands of women at risk.

Domestic violence is still a major issue in Canada, but rates of domestic violence have fallen in recent years, thanks to advancements in gender equality. The conditional permanent residence regulation is a major step backward in Canada’s fight against gender-based violence. It resurrects the notion of women as chattels of their spouse with no legal right outside of their husband and his family.

At the heart of this we must decide if we should allow political expediency to trump the rights, safety, value and humanity of all women. On this day, the anniversary of the 1989 Montreal Massacre, as we recommit ourselves to eradicate violence against all women, let us say no to the conditional permanent resident status.

Debbie Douglas is executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants.

Avvy Go is director of the Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic.

Sarah Blackstock is director of advocacy and communications at the YWCA.

 

This article was first published on Wednesday December 05, 2012 on The Star

Immigrant Women, Violence and the Legal System

Immigrant Women, Violence and the Legal System

The legal systems accessed by immigrant women who are dealing with violence in their intimate relationships are based on colonial male perspectives and are excessively intimidating and largely inaccessible to immigrant women.  The legal resources and legal assistance that have been developed to make the legal systems more accessible are also based in a majority view of the world and are, in general, inaccessible to immigrant women.  Women are forced to self-represent in various legal arenas, additionally women who have the benefit of legal representation are interfacing with lawyers who do not have the resources to adequately explain the processes and options in terms of the legal issues as well as the cultural/ethnic and language implications.

Lawyers, front-line workers and legal advocates play a key role in assuring successful interventions, addressing the needs of battered Immigrant women and bringing the abusers to justice. In recognition of the importance of our shared social and professional responsibilities, we have prepared toolkits and other resources is intended to further strengthen the collaboration between lawyers, legal advocates and front-line workers towards ending violence against women in our community.

“Women are never just women, but have multiple cross-cutting identities revolving around race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, ability, [religion] and citizenship status.”

Alexandra Dobrowsky
“Immigrant women, Equality and Diversity in Canada”

Legal Resources and Toolkits

Toolkit for Lawyers – Best Practices for Working with Battered Immigrant Women

Toolkit for Women -How to Work with a Lawyer

Lawyer Responses the Empower Immigrant Women who have Experienced Violence

 

 

Log onto BWSS Battered Women’s Support Services or The Violence Stops Here through Facebook, read our Ending Violence Blog, and follow Ending Violence on Twitter for tips and tools for action.  Then share liberally to start the conversation and take the conversation further than you ever have before.

Use your POWER to make your action count!

Engaging Immigrant Women in the Legal System

By Andrea Canales, Manager, Engaging Immigrant Women in the Legal System Program

Arising from BWSS commitment to social change, the Engaging Immigrant Women in the Legal System project objective is to use empowerment methods to minimize the power imbalance Immigrant women experience when they access the legal system and to make the legal system more accessible.

After 3 years of extremely successful and cutting edge work, we are proud to report on the many accomplishments achieved during the project timeline spanning from 2008 to 2011. With community work engagement and working with Immigrant women from the Iranian, Afghani, South Asian and Latin American communities, at the heart of our project, we were able to reach and train over 350 women from these communities while developing and/or enhancing their leadership and critical thinking skills.

From providing language specific training in the community, to delivering direct training to community workers working with Immigrant women, our work has been a reflection and a response to the identified needs in each of these communities. Spearheading this process, were the 14 trained Peer Researchers, representing the 3 communities, who worked tirelessly to ensure that the training was specific and culturally appropriate for the participants in the Self-Advocacy workshops, which were fully created and facilitated by them, in their roles as emerging community leaders.

Alongside this training, we developed an array of resources that will ensure a fairer and greater access to the legal system by not just Immigrant women, but by all women navigating the legal system. In total, we developed 6 resources:

  • Empowering Non-Status, Refugee and Immigrant Women Who Experience Violence Training Manual
  • A Resource for Front-line Workers: When Battered Women are Arrested
  • Resources for Women: When Battered Women are Arrested
  • Violence against Women and the Law: Resource for Women and Advocates
  • Toolkit for Lawyers: Best Practices in Working with Battered Immigrant Women
  • Toolkit for Immigrant Women working with a Lawyer

We have translated the above resources as well as our up until now English only version of “How Can I Help my Friend” into Farsi, Punjabi, Spanish.

Additionally, we did in-person outreach and project resource distribution to over 65 community workers, over 45 community specific doctors, MLA’s, and ESL teachers as well as over 10 community speakers.

Overall, the Engaging Immigrant Women in the Legal System project has been a rewarding and well-received initiative. We continue to receive requests from the community to come in and provide this type of much needed training. The Peer Researches feel saddened at having to reach the end of this project; nonetheless, they are fully aware of the amazing impact that they have brought into women’s lives as well as their own. As one of them wrote:

“Through all the process the most important thing I learned is to see the power and the capacity to create a network of safety and information. I felt part of a chain in creating a change to make the system work for Immigrant women but also to make Immigrant women part of the change itself… I feel lucky to have been part of such a great project in which I had the opportunity of growing in all levels, professionally and personally.”

 

This project was in collaboration/received funding from with the Law Foundation

By Andrea Canales, Manager, Engaging Immigrant Women in the Legal System Program

Arising from BWSS commitment to social change, the Engaging Immigrant Women in the Legal System project objective is to use empowerment methods to minimize the power imbalance Immigrant women experience when they access the legal system and to make the legal system more accessible.

After 3 years of extremely successful and cutting edge work, we are proud to report on the many accomplishments achieved during the project timeline spanning from 2008 to 2011. With community work engagement and working with Immigrant women from the Iranian, Afghani, South Asian and Latin American communities, at the heart of our project, we were able to reach and train over 350 women from these communities while developing and/or enhancing their leadership and critical thinking skills.

From providing language specific training in the community, to delivering direct training to community workers working with Immigrant women, our work has been a reflection and a response to the identified needs in each of these communities. Spearheading this process, were the 14 trained Peer Researchers, representing the 3 communities, who worked tirelessly to ensure that the training was specific and culturally appropriate for the participants in the Self-Advocacy workshops, which were fully created and facilitated by them, in their roles as emerging community leaders.

Alongside this training, we developed an array of resources that will ensure a fairer and greater access to the legal system by not just Immigrant women, but by all women navigating the legal system. In total, we developed 6 resources:

  • Empowering Non-Status, Refugee and Immigrant Women Who Experience Violence Training Manual
  • A Resource for Front-line Workers: When Battered Women are Arrested
  • Resources for Women: When Battered Women are Arrested
  • Violence against Women and the Law: Resource for Women and Advocates
  • Toolkit for Lawyers: Best Practices in Working with Battered Immigrant Women
  • Toolkit for Immigrant Women working with a Lawyer

We have translated the above resources as well as our up until now English only version of “How Can I Help my Friend” into Farsi, Punjabi, Spanish.

Additionally, we did in-person outreach and project resource distribution to over 65 community workers, over 45 community specific doctors, MLA’s, and ESL teachers as well as over 10 community speaks.

Overall, the Engaging Immigrant Women in the Legal System project has been a rewarding and well-received initiative. We continue to receive requests from the community to come in and provide this type of much needed training. The Peer Researches feel saddened at having to reach the end of this project; nonetheless, they are fully aware of the amazing impact that they have brought into women’s lives as well as their own. As one of them wrote:

“Through all the process the most important thing I learned is to see the power and the capacity to create a network of safety and information. I felt part of a chain in creating a change to make the system work for Immigrant women but also to make Immigrant women part of the change itself… I feel lucky to have been part of such a great project in which I had the opportunity of growing in all levels, professionally and personally.”

This project was in collaboration/received funding from with the Law Foundation