The federal government is marching further in the direction of a Bushite policy towards immigrants and refugees. While this has been the direction of Canadian policy for some time, the accession of Paul Martin as prime minister is clearly accelerating the process. The newly-created Department of Public Safety - a blatant imitation of the US Department of Homeland Security - is perhaps the most obvious indicator as to how enthusiastically the Liberal Party has embraced the war on Arabs, Muslims, immigrants and people of colour. A recent cabinet decision transfers many of Citizenship and Immigration Canada's responsibilities for enforcement of immigration decisions to a new border agency, headed by Anne McLellan, Solicitor General and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, rather than the immigration minister. This move further criminalizes immigrants and refugees, deliberately conflating immigration policy with criminality and law enforcement, both in fact and in public discourse. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The government's refusal to call a public inquiry into the disgraceful and racist process by which US authorities, with the complicity and assistance of Canada's security apparatus, shipped Maher Arar to Syria, to be tortured and imprisoned for 13 months, is another obvious case in point. So is the introduction of Permanent Resident cards for all landed immigrants - a move which left close to 50 people stranded, unable to return to Canada. On top of this, there is the ludicrous Project Thread case which lead to the jailing of at least 24 Pakistani and South Asian men last summer and fall - all of whom were ultimately released (and many deported) without criminal charges. If the jailing of Japanese immigrants during World War II is now recognized as a terrible stain on the civil rights record in this country, the new wave of anti-immigrant legislation, arrests and detentions is a reminder that little has fundamentally changed, and that racism and government contempt for civil liberties are alive and well in the Canadian state.

This is what makes the valiant work of small groups of anti-racist and civil rights crusaders so important. Within this issue, Mac Scott and Lesley Wood report on the work of activists engaged in direct action casework around immigration issues - largely unseen efforts aimed at stopping deportation, assisting refugees denied status, calling attention to detentions and secret trials, and supporting detainees and their families - and how to try and link these efforts to broader movements for dignity and justice.

But despite these bright spots, most of the mainstream left is doing remarkably little around these issues. Continuing a pattern of ignoring the urgent needs of immigrants and workers of colour, the NDP and most unions have failed to launch any meaningful campaign against the new wave of repressive legislation and the construction of a more repressive national security state. In contrast, groups in Europe and Australia have succeeded in building broad campaigns to support immigrants, refugees and undocumented workers through concerted outreach and repeated demonstrations and disruptions aimed at state immigration institutions.

And where the mainstream media does occasionally expose the dirty dealings by the government, CSIS and the RCMP, it still falls into racist and sexist stereotypes. Media reports about the tireless efforts of Monia Mazigh, the wife of Maher Arar, to free her husband and expose Canada's appalling role in his imprisonment repeatedly characterized her as a loyal Muslim woman, rather than an independent, highly skilled and well educated campaigner for civil rights and government accountability.

More than this, the mainstream media nowhere questions the whole basis of the clampdown on immigrants, refugees and people of colour. It fails to recognize that the war on "enemies" in our midst is a propaganda campaign meant to win the consent of millions of people to a government agenda designed to curtail freedom of movement, protest, expression, assembly, and so on. In the name of "protecting" us and insuring "public safety," governments at all levels are systematically shrinking the space for dissent in our society. Unions and social justice movements are already paying dearly for this - and they will pay much more in the years ahead.