Ex-KGB agent pleads against deportation

He had no right to come here.

He has no right to remain here.

He was an officer of the KGB, the notorious Soviet secret police. Every member of the Communist political police was either directly or indirectly responsible for the enslavement and murder of millions of innocents.

The men and women of the KGB were not conscripts. They were an elite that enjoyed perks in the USSR – better pay, better holidays, foreign travel, a privileged status  – just like the SS in Nazi Germany. And they had an identical function – the repression of dissent, the orchestration of genocide, the running of the concentration camps of the Gulag. The only difference between them and their Nazi colleagues is that the Reds butchered more people – no less than 20 million victims – because they had a longer run in power, from 1917 to 1991. Thankfully, the Nazi regime lasted only 12 years.

Our immigration laws forbid all veterans of the KGB from entering Canada. And, let’s be clear on this, you need not have been a killer. If all you did was make lunch or iron the executioners’ uniforms you are still inadmissible. That’s the law.

There are some Canadians who don’t like this rule. Fair enough. They can work to change it. That’s their democratic right. But this man has no such privilege. He is not a citizen. Whether he has lived here for a decade or been a nice neighbour or grows gardenias in his garden and gives them to the poor is irrelevant. He should never have been allowed into Canada and he has no right to stay here.

Being compassionate we have given him more than one chance to prove otherwise and to do so at our expense. He had a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board. That tribunal rejected his claim to refugee status. He appealed that finding. After carefully reviewing the case a Federal Court judge concluded that he should be deported. Instead of obeying the court the KGB man “sought sanctuary” in the First Lutheran Church of East Vancouver.

Folks who come to an understanding of the law by watching re-runs of The Hunchback of Notre Dame may feel otherwise but there is actually no right of “sanctuary” in any church, temple, synagogue or mosque in Canada. While imagining a KGB man on his knees praying for forgiveness is amusing what is not is that this bolt hole was set up before the good judge rendered his judgment. In other words the KGB man and his friends decided that if they didn’t like the court’s decision they would just ignore it and spirit him away to a church basement. That’s where he now sits, thumbing his nose at the authorities.

The remedy is obvious. Canada Border Services Agency officials need to enter the building, seize the KGB man and put him on the first plane back to Mother Russia. Those who deliberately aided and abetted a fugitive from the law should then be given their day in court. The notion that there is some kind of “sanctuary” in religious buildings needs to be undone, once and for all. If all this doesn’t happen it’ll be obvious the country is not governed by the rule of law but by the whims of those whom Lenin appropriately enough described as “useful idiots.”

But it won’t be enough if we only deport this one KGB man. Ottawa needs to finish the job. There are other veterans of the Soviet secret police – the NVKD, SMERSH and KGB – here in Canada. They have, so far, escaped justice. We need to purge our home and native land of all of them. One is too many.

Finally please don’t start whining on about my lacking in compassion. There are millions of genuine refugees in the world. Canada can and should provide victims of persecution both asylum and opportunity, just as both were once offered to my parents. Half a century ago they found sanctuary here from Nazi and Soviet oppression. Ever since they have helped build this country. It’s unconscionable that we would now tolerate a veteran of one of the evil regimes that tried to eradicate them in our midst. Canada doesn’t need to make KGB captains into citizens. Not even one.