IRB and Canada Refugee Act: Helping those who help themselves

hahaha or the guy who innocently brought his entire family of six from Sri Lanka for a Arizona gem symposium, yeah right, he knew his refugee scam wouldnt fly in the US, but considering Canada is a easy mark why not try there regardless his scam coming from the USA makes him ineligible.

The problem is with Citizenship and Immigration Canada as a whole. People like the guy who snuck onto the plane with a mask and, what was it? A frequent flyer card or something? They clearly have broken the law. They should not be granted refugee status. Until it became a scandal last year, many people from Mexico were told "dont apply for a work permit, just fly up there with no passport and claim refugee status, it is faster and cheeper for you, and they will pay your living expenses until you find a job."

I do not think the current government apathy is to do with ethnic voters, however. I meet people from different countries and ethnic backgrounds every day, and the ones who are new immigrants tend to be furious that it is such a time consuming process to get here, and tp bring their families over. The CIC has no where near enough staff, and the staff they do have are burnt out, or under-trained, or else, like everyone else at the bottom level of the civil service these days, they have zero job security. The office that issues Permanent Resident cards lost a huge proportion of their staff in the spring. Their union put out a warning, because the government wouldnt, that if you needed a citizenship or permanant resident card by the summer good luck, the processing times were doubled.

Buddy from Hong Kong knew that the system was flawed, and the treatment soft when he scammed his way passed the Air Canada staff, who should lose their jobs over it. What if he had been a terrorist? He is a prime example of why the system is so badly bogged down. He gets to jump queue, while people in legitimate need have to wait longer. His lawyer will drag things out, knowing that is the most likely way to win is to make it cheaper for the government to give up. He should be deported, and barred from entering Canada all together for that. But instead, Canada as a nation is the butt of jokes by the international community, for being too soft on the guy once he got here, and for letting him on the plane in the first place. But clearly an overhaul is needed.

It is sad to see that, everywhere around the world, there is great misunderstanding and myth-making about refugees and the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees. This article is just one of them.It's hard to know where to start particularly since it's difficult to understand exactly what the complaint is. It is true that Canada has a global reputation for representing international best practice where refugee determinations are concerned - that ought to be a source of pride, and it happens because Canada is a country governed by the rule of law and because, one might add, because Canada has both the resources and the capacity to process refugees humanely and in accordance with the law. The first myth that always needs to be countered is that Canada, or any other Western country, hosts a disproportionate share of refugees. In fact, the overwhelming number of refugees are hosted in non-Western countries, most commonly in neighbouring countries. Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and countries all over Africa host a far greater number of refugees, both in absolute and proportional numbers. Poor countries, however, do not necessarily respect the rights of refugees and don't treat them well, which is one of the reasons people do move from these so-called 'safe countries'.Second, and the myth that provoked me to counter this, there is no such thing as a UN mandated 'safe country'. The UN Refugee Convention applies potentially to all countries, because there is always the potential that any State may persecute or fail its citizens. The UN doesn't mandate safe countries - governments of individual States do, for the simple reason that they don't want to meet their international obligations. Third, it's absolutely wrong to suggest that people are jumping some kind of 'queue'. The UNHCR refugee determination process is very far from an orderly queue, results in people languishing in refugee camps for decades, and is plagued by corruption and resettles a very small percentage of refugees. Think about it: you're desperate and afraid for your life. Do you think you're willing to sit around and spend the rest of your life in a UN refugee camp where hardly anyone ever gets out? If you had the money you would want to leave if you could. Is this fair? No, but then neither is capitalism in general. This was the compromise Western governments agreed on, because it suited them: it provides a crude filter and minimises their obligations.Fourth - and I think this really is the critical point - the whole article demonstrates a deep lack of empathy and understanding of the causes of forced migration. Not every refugee fulfils the UN definition, which is restrictive and biased towards a particular conception of refugeehood; but the truth is that we live in an incredibly unequal world, and the desire to improve one's life chances is a perfectly natural human instinct. It's a matter of sheer luck that some of us were born, or managed to move to, a rich country; that we get to live to 90, have health care, get to go to school, and eat rather too well. A lot of the world lives on the equivalent of US$2.50 a day. Tell me, what makes you more entitled to your disproportionate share of the world's goods than those in that majority? Nothing but sheer luck, and certainly not because of the greater quality of your soul.