As Montreal city council prepares to vote on Monday on a motion declaring this a “sanctuary city,” several community groups concerned with the fate of undocumented immigrants are warning that words aren’t enough.
“What we’ve learned is that motions are often really symbolic and they don’t result in tangible changes in people’s lives,” Jaggi Singh, an organizer with Solidarity Across Borders, said on Sunday.
Singh’s group plans to hold a press conference with at least five other organizations on Monday to urge the city to adopt concrete measures that will help people with precarious immigration status.
Among them is a demand that the city order local police and métro agents to stop asking immigration status when they stop a person for a minor infraction and to stop collaborating with Canada Border Services Agency to have them deported, he said.
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Mayor Denis Coderre announced on Wednesday that Montreal would join other North American cities, such as Toronto, San Francisco and Chicago, by adopting the declaration of an official policy not to discriminate against undocumented immigrants by denying them access to municipal services.
The mayor’s move with the “sanctuary city” declaration comes as a surge of immigrants, many without status, cross into Canada from the United States, where U.S. President Donald Trump has declared his intention to round up and deport millions of illegal immigrants.
In fact, Coderre posted a message to Trump on Twitter after the president signed an executive order banning visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.
“Message to Donald @POTUS Trump,” Coderre’s tweet said. “Montreal proud ‘Sanctuary City’ Newcomers & refugees are welcome. Diversity is our strength and part of our DNA.”
The Montreal motion is to be put to council for a vote on Monday afternoon.
However, Singh, who said he’s read the declaration on the city’s website, called it “cheap symbolism.”
“In many ways, a limited and symbolic ‘sanctuary city’ declaration is actually kind of worse than nothing at all because you’re giving this false impression to people who are already quite precarious that somehow there’s safety,” Singh said.
Among the community organizations to be represented at the press conference will be Stella, which works to improve conditions for sex workers in Montreal.
The group will explain how the Montreal police have been visiting massage parlours and collaborating with Canada Border Services Agency to have women without immigration papers deported, Singh said.
“What we’ve been stressing … is that a pre-condition for any ‘sanctuary city’ is that there is no more collaboration between the police and the Canada Border Services Agency,” Singh said.
“Unfortunately, the current resolution is quite limited and quite symbolic.”
A paragraph of Montreal’s declaration says the city will mandate council’s public-safety committee to “develop, with the Montreal police department, an approach to ensure that a person without legal status in a situation of vulnerability can have access to municipal public safety services without risk of being denounced to immigration authorities and deported,” unless the person is specifically mentioned in a court order to be removed on a criminal matter.
Singh added that the same directive should be given to the city’s public-transit agency, the Société de transport de Montréal, as the police. “People sometimes get picked up on really minor stuff on the métro and wind up having their lives ruined by getting deported.”
There’s nothing stopping Montreal from taking action on that right away, Singh said. The city should also declare all municipal buildings are off-limits to the CBSA, he said.
“We should treat all our neighbours, classmates and workers with dignity and respect,” he said. “And amongst those people are people who are currently undocumented. It’s a modern reality.”
