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Say “No” to Honorary Doctorate for Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney

Say “No” to Honorary Doctorate for Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney

This petition is closed
50 Supporters

Arielle D.
started this petition to
Dr. Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, President, University of Haifa
The University of Haifa has decided to confer an honorary doctorate on Canada’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, in Toronto on November 4, 2012.
The university says Mr. Kenney will receive the award “in recognition of his steadfast position against anti-Semitism, racism and intolerance,” yet his record makes a mockery of this claim.

Under his leadership the Canadian government is acting to deter asylum seekers and refugees from seeking and obtaining protection in Canada. The “Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act,” passed in Parliament in June 2012, authorizes incarceration for up to a year of men, women and children over 16 who arrive in Canada in an “irregular” fashion. This echoes Canada’s refusal to admit Jewish refugees in the late 1930s (“None is Too Many”).

Under the new law, Mr. Kenney has sole discretion to determine which countries are “safe” (on a Designated Country of Origin list) without consulting human rights experts. Refugee applicants from these so-called safe countries are being denied former legal rights of appeal and live without healthcare coverage, including emergency care.

Mr. Kenney considers a growing number of claimants from democratic nations in the European Union, particularly Hungarian Roma, to be “bogus refugees.” Hungary is on the DCO list as a “safe” country, despite persecution of its Romani citizens. Kenney, who insists that Hungarian Roma experience nothing more than “difficulty,” remains silent about the extreme right-wing, anti-Roma, anti-Semitic Jobbik Party, which now holds one third of Hungary’s parliamentary seats. Its paramilitary arm and other neo-Nazi groups have targeted, beaten, intimidated and killed Romani men, women, and children, and are now targeting Jews. Yet Mr. Kenney remains silent.

Please sign our urgent petition asking the University of Haifa to rescind its decision to grant Mr. Kenney this degree.

Posted (Updated )