POPULATION-CANADA: Opposition to Court Rulings on Deportations

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Jan 30 2001 (IPS) - Until recently under Canadian law immigrants considered a danger to the public were ordered to leave this country without an explanation.

Only after a few thousand people had already been asked to leave under these circumstances have various Canadian judges issued rulings that reasons must be given before deportations can occur.

But not everyone is happy with the rulings.

“It is a concern that the [deportation] process is slowed down,” says Anthony Iozzo, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, a government department.

“Hopefully, this isn’t just the tip of the iceberg. We’re at a point in time where we almost seem to be at a loss about how to deal with criminals who enter our country, whether legally or illegally. And if we don’t deal with it in short order, we’ll just attract more of these same types to this country,” says Inky Mark, the immigration spokesperson for the opposition Canadian Alliance party, which pushes a law and order political agenda.

Those affected by the deportation orders have been convicted of serious crimes, sometimes of a violent nature. Recent examples include a Nigerian who was deported from the United States after spending more than a year in a US jail for importing heroin, and a former refugee from El Salvador who had been convicted of numerous criminal offences, including breaking and entering and assault.

But Jeff House, a Toronto immigration lawyer, who welcomes the courts’ rulings, even though they have occurred after “the closing of the barn door”, says that these removal procedures of the Canadian immigration department “have been badly and unfairly used”.

Many of the deported are immigrants from the Caribbean, as well as such places as Portugal, Italy and South America.

“Tons of them are Jamaican,” says Claudette Stewart, a spokesperson for the Jamaican Canadian Association in Toronto. She says that Canadians of Jamaican origin are unfairly “singled out” by both immigration authorities and the police.

What these removed people frequently share is that they were born elsewhere, came to Canada as children, grew up here, but never became Canadian citizens. As immigrants and non-Canadians they become vulnerable in any trouble with the law. “Their parents may have been ignorant about what [citizenship] meant,” says House.

However, these deported people have lost touch with their country of origins and are culturally Canadian if not legally, which makes it hard for them to adjust to their new surroundings after a removal from Canada, says Stewart.

“A person who was brought to this country and is 18 years of age or younger is a product of the Canadian society.”

Some of the governments of the affected countries, which have received the deported Canadians, complain that Canada is simply exporting its social problems rather than deal with them domestically.

On the other hand, these same governments have “themselves to blame” because they signed agreements with Ottawa to facilitate the arrival of the Canadian deportees, adds Stewart.

House notes that many of the deported were convicted of crimes involving illegal drugs, such as cocaine or heroin.

“Canada by and large has not done a very good job of getting services to assist people here to break their drug dependency. There has been a revolving door. You can’t get treated, but you can go to jail,” states House.

The tough Canadian measure against immigrants convicted of crimes was passed into law a little over five years ago after two violent deaths in Toronto in the mid-1990s involving criminals of Jamaican origin. In one case, the victim was a white policeman and in another a white female restaurant patron.

The result was a highly charged political climate where innocent blacks, Jamaican or not, were tarred with the same negative brush by local authorities and the media.

A spokesman for the immigration ministry said the department is contemplating changes to the current immigration law, but would give not further details.

A Winnipeg refugee lawyer, David Matas suggests that the Canadian government will introduce legislation in Parliament that will attempt to circumvent the court rulings and eliminate the explanation requirement once again. He opposes such a change.

“If you commit a crime, you may lose your right to stay, but that doesn’t mean you lose your right to be treated fairly. That’s true in the criminal system too p they may lose their right to freedom, but not their right to a fair trial,” says Matas.