Immigration decisions callous, Kafkaesque

Woman can't reunite with son after five years; 97-year-old woman told her case may take another 47 months.

by Elizabeth May
Embassy Magazine, September 27, 2011

People often ask me if I have encountered any big surprises since starting as a member of Parliament in May.

Of course, I knew that an MP's job is hard work and much of it focused on assisting people who need help in the riding. And I knew that the bulk of those issues would relate to immigration problems.

What I had not been expecting was the callous, Kafkaesque nature of recent immigration decisions. Here are a few examples (names and nationalities removed to respect privacy):

A young pregnant woman applied to come to Canada, sponsored by other relatives from her country of origin. At the time, she was told she could not apply for an unborn child. When the child was three, her immigration approval came through, but then she was told she had not applied for the child so she could not bring him.

She headed to Canada, leaving the boy with relatives, under the belief that she could sponsor her child once she established residency. Two years later, immigration officials have rejected the application to allow her five-year-old son to join her, and have written him: "Dear Mr. XX.... You do not fit any acceptable classification of sponsored person"—as if he could read. Maybe it is just as well he cannot.

A Canadian citizen has had her 97-year-old mother living with her from the UK while her mother applies for permanent residency, which has been in process since 2008. The mother has no living relatives in the UK, and the family spends enormous sums for health care insurance. The most recent letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada has told her the process to determine whether her 97-year-old mother can stay will take another 47 months.

A refugee from political strife who, at the tender age of six, had seen his entire family slaughtered in his country of origin has applied to come to Canada. He is being sponsored by a Canadian citizen, another refugee from the same turmoil, whose family adopted the younger boy in the refugee camp. The sponsor, his older brother, started the sponsorship process seven years ago. Citizenship and Immigration Canada has told the younger brother, now in his 20s, that his country of origin is fine and he should go back.

I could go on and on. The individual heartbreaks should be no surprise. In the five years in which Stephen Harper has been prime minister, the time to process visa applications for sponsored parents and grandparents has increased (depending on the visa post, from nine months to 30), while the number of visas issued annually to parents and grandparents has plummeted from 20,005 in 2006, to 11,200 in 2011.

In the House in June, Bob Rae, Liberal Party interim leader, read the text of an email from an immigration official to a Liberal caucus member to the effect that they were under political orders that family reunification was not a priority. Should instructions change, the email concluded, the process would be improved.

Human smuggling bill

Reflecting the government's willingness to treat all refugee claimants as potential terrorists, is Bill C-4, the so-called human smuggling bill. It should more accurately be called the Refugee Internment Act.

This bill panders to xenophobia prompted by the sight of boatloads of refugee claimants on our shores.

Strangely, this bill, marketed as a way to prevent the unscrupulous from preying on the desperate, will target people arriving by boat for special treatment. It will eventually be struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada as offensive to the Charter.

Those refugee applicants deemed to have made an "irregular arrival" (primarily by ship, but not exclusively), will be placed under mandatory arrest and detention for one year.

This applies to men, women and children who arrive by boat. Most refugee claimants in Canada arrive at our airports.

When I asked Immigration Minister Jason Kenney about this discrepancy, he told me he can designate entry anywhere to meet the terms of this act.

I pointed out to him that it was wrong to talk about refugees "jumping the queue," as political refugees, by definition, are not able, due to fear of persecution or death, to stay in their country of origin to apply to leave.

Mr. Kenney says the queue means going to a UN refugee camp and waiting there.

Of course, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees depends on voluntary funding and the agency's resources are over-stretched. The UN refugee camps are not set up around the world as waiting rooms for Canada. They are typically established near the borders of areas of natural or climate-crisis disasters, or regions of armed conflict. Those fearing political persecution are far less likely to have any access to a UNHCR refugee camp.

The Conservative claim is clever messaging, but sophistry.

I want to close with a note of gratitude and a tribute to former Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj. When a family in his riding was wrongfully deported, he dug into his own pocket, retained a lawyer and helped the family of Arjan Tabaj return to the safe haven of Canada last week.

Let us hope the Federal Court ruling in the Tabaj case will give the government pause. Perhaps the Harper government can step back from the punitive approach, withdraw Bill C-4 and discuss with Canadians how we want potential new Canadians to be treated.

Canada's policy toward immigration and refugees has changed dramatically while the Conservatives had a minority government. We need to discuss these issues and protect human rights now that Mr. Harper has his majority.