This is weird.

[velvetpage]

I've just come across a huge immigration dilemma.

Here's the story.

An Iranian couple came to Canada some ten years ago seeking political asylum - in other words, they were refugee claimants. While that claim was wending its way with glacial slowness through our court system, the couple had a child - a son, Kevin, now nine years old. The child is a Canadian citizen by dint of birthright citizenship.

In the fullness of time, the refugee claim was denied and the entire family was sent back to Iran. While there, the parents were tortured, in particular the husband. After a year or so, they managed to escape and were on a flight from Guyana direct to Canada.

That was a fateful flight in more than one sense. A passenger had a heart attack and died during the flight, so the plane landed unexpectedly in Costa Rica. Everyone got off the plane while they were dealing with the deceased passenger. The family was asked for their American visas. They didn't have any. They weren't expecting to come to America at all - they were on a direct flight to Canada.

The Americans didn't know what to do with them. For the past twenty days, the family has been in that detention centre in Texas that I linked to a few days ago.

That's right, folks. There's a nine-year-old Canadian citizen sitting in a prison cell in Texas for the horrible crime of leaving Iran with his parents and getting stopped on U.S. soil.

A link: An interview with the family

Now, I was all set to start writing letters, until I found out that they'd already applied for, and been denied, refugee status in Canada. You see, it's actually quite difficult to get deported from Canada. It doesn't happen all that often. The court process is extremely slow, and many judges would look at that nine-year-old son and let the family stay on compassionate grounds. That didn't happen in this case, and I would really like to know why. What is it about this family that caused them to be deported, and then tortured in Iran? We're missing some vital information, here.

But then there's the dilemma of their treatment in the States. Why the heck didn't the American officials simply put the family back on the plane and let us deal with them? There are shades of the Arar case all over this one, and that fiasco still hasn't been settled as far as the Americans are concerned. No matter what else is or isn't true of this family, the bottom line is that the Americans didn't need to ever be involved. All they had to do was make sure that anyone who got off that plane, got back on it a few hours later. That's it. End of story. Where in that scenario is there room for a maximum-security prison in Texas that has been grudgingly "converted" to a detention centre for immigrant families? And that's not even considering the human rights issues of the existence of that detention centre.

So I'm cautiously outraged. I want more information. I want to know if the Americans in Costa Rica may have contacted Canadian immigration while the flight was on the ground. I want to know if they've had any dealings with them in the intervening weeks. I want to know if there's any grounds for reopening their refugee claim (as perhaps there should be, if the story about the torture is true.)

Most of all, I want Peter Mackay (foreign affairs minister and deputy PM) to grow a spine and insist that people who are Canada's to deal with, actually end up in Canada to be dealt with. If I ever learn that our immigration people had a hand in keeping them in the States, I'll be outraged in truth.

Comments

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

OH! Now I see why the Americans were involved. Puerto Rico, not Costa Rica. They still should have never detained them but until I saw that, I was confused. (More confused at least.) Well at first they say CR and then they say PR.

I wonder why they tried to go back to Canada, why they didn't try the UK perhaps. And where the heck do they deport the kid to? Canada, and the parents to Iran? Geeze.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The kid probably has dual citizenship, Canada and Iran.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The thing is, it's entirely possible that he wasn't a Convention refugee when he first arrived. We have no idea what he may have been into before coming to Canada the first time. Perhaps he was once more oppressor than oppressed; it's certainly happened before. But when he was sent back, his government would have assumed he'd spilled all kinds of beans to Canadian authorities, so they tortured him - with the result that he is now a Convention refugee. I'm not sure what the legalities are on a deportee becoming a refugee as a result of the deportation. Normally, a deportee is inadmissible. Period. It's possible that Canadian Immigration would have taken one look at his documents and his history on their computer screen and sent him back on the first plane to leave. He had his chance before, ten years of it, and blew it.

But that doesn't change the fact that the Americans have no business being involved in this at all, anymore than they did with Arar. The prison is just adding insult to injury.

There's already a letter-writing campaign. Check out POGGE.ca for information. (I'm not sure if that's the right web address - I get a feed of it to my lj. It stands for Peace, Order, and Good Government, eh?, and it's a left-leaning political commentary blog.)

[siobhan63.livejournal.com]

the Americans have no business being involved in this at all

Well, if the plane landed on US territory (Puerto Rico) than yes, they do. And from what i understand, the family did not have a visa for Canada (Iranians need a temporary resident visa even if they're just entering as tourists and even having one doesn't guarantee entry into Canada). So if you're a US official and you find people on the plane that don't have the proper visa requirements for either the US or Canada, what are you supposed to do?

I'm loathe to defend the US, but i don't think you can simply dismiss their involvement that easily.

[neosis.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think the U.S. should be involved at all. If the people in question don't have proper papers for arriving in Canada, Canadian immigration should be notified and arrangements should be made to ship them here. The easiest way would be to put them back on the plane and have a pair of police officers and an immigration official waiting to disembark them when they arrive unless there's a serious reason to believe they might be a threat to the plane and the passengers on board it.

If they were wanted criminals in the U.S. then I can see the legality and reason for detaining them, however, the pretext for holding them seems flimsey and a little racist.

[kesmun.livejournal.com]

It sounds like a case of American INS being given an inch and taking a mile to me. Unfortunately, that's all too common, especially with a pervasive attitude painting all middle-eastern people as potential terrorists, most especially Iranians and Iraqis. Big Brother is absolutely making his presence known.