This is the sort of person who we don't--who we won't--let in:
A gay member of one of Hamas’s most important families will be allowed to stay in the United States, dodging what he termed “certain death” were he deported back to the West Bank.
John Calvin, 24, who does not use his birth name for safety reasons, fled his native Nablus to Canada in 2011, believing his life was in danger after his family discovered his conversion to Christianity. While in Canada, his situation became even more precarious after he came out as gay to his family over the phone.
Despite the mortal danger, his refugee application was suspended in 2012, and on December 31, 2014, he received an official letter of deportation from Canada. He then fled to the US, where he was detained for nearly seven months, before an American judge ruled he would be allowed to stay in his newest home.
O, Canada--how utterly shameful! I'd like to know which member of our irredeemably corrupt "august" Immigration and Refugee Board ruled against him.
Yes, the decision to deport this young man was absolutely shameful. But you appear to be confused about the timeline. It was not "Trudeau's Canada" that denied him asylum - his refugee claim was suspended in 2012 and he was deported at the end of 2014, almost a year before Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister. It was "Harper's Canada" who deported him, and he was by no means the first gay man facing death in his home country to have his refugee claim rejected by the previous government, using reasoning that was every bit as warped as it was in this case.
ReplyDeleteYou wonder which IRB member came to such a shameful conclusion. It could have been any one of them, since they were all appointed by the Harper government and given a mandate to find whatever pretext they could, no matter how ridiculous, to deny refugee claims.
It appears that the current government was not inclined to allow such travesties to recur, because it explicitly identified gay men as one group of Syrian refugees facing a particularly high risk of persecution among Syrian refugees, and therefore instructed immigration officials to make them a priority for resettlement to Canada.