Rafe Mair Online

As many Canadians set their hair on fire over two ship loads of Tamils, alleging to be refugees reach our shore, perhaps it would be a good idea to examine our options.

Canada is a signatory to the UN Protocol on refugees and perhaps a couple of definitions will help us understand who is and who is not a refugee:

Who is a refugee?  A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or is afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.

Who is an asylum seeker? When people flee their own country and seek sanctuary in another country, they apply for asylum – the right to be recognized as a refugee and receive legal protection and material assistance. An asylum seeker must demonstrate that his or her fear of persecution in his or her home country is well-founded.

Canada is not obliged to take “economic” refugees.

Sri Lanka has just come out of a long civil war with its minority Tamil population defeated and, according to the Guardian Weekly there has been no reconciliation process between the majority and the minority Tamils.

Whether Tamils in revolt were terrorists or freedom fighters is open to question, as this situation always is. Perhaps the best example of this happened in Palestine in the 40’s where men like Menachem Begin, a future Prime Minister of Israel, blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 95 British military personnel and wounding many others. The Zionist movement considered this an act of patriotism; the UK and most of the world saw it as terrorism.

Canada has turned ships aside before and the blot on pour escutcheon remains vivid.

The MV St. Louis in May 1939 carrying seven non-Jewish and 930 Jews was turned away from our shores with many of the Jews winding up in death camps. At the time, Frederick Blair was director of Canada’s immigration program. Mr. Blair was notoriously anti-Semitic and he did all he could to block the immigration of Jews into Canada and he succeeded. That story has been told by Irving Abella in his 1986 book None is too Many.

Cuba, the US and the UK also refused to allow the MV St. Louis to land.

Here is the dilemma. We don’t know if these Tamils are or are not legitimate refugees under the UN Protocol to which we are signatory and we won’t know until they are processed. Under our system, the processing may take years. The problem is that Canada is not equipped to deal with its obligations.

That these refugees may have paid money to a “snakehead” is irrelevant if they are truly refugees. The Jews on the MV St. Louis had paid for their run for freedom.

That there is a great deal of racism here as there was with the MV St. Louis seems pretty clear from the language being used.

This question arises – are you convinced that these Tamils are not legitimate refugees? If so, upon what evidence did you reach that conclusion?

Here’s where I stand – Canada has one of three options;

1.   it can intercept ships on the high seas, and turn them away, a hugely illegal act.

2.   it can board the ship, grab the refugee claimants, and instantly deport them hoping they haven’t just done the equivalent of Canada’s handling of the MV St. Louis.

3.   It can put in place a fair but speedy process to make a fair judgment on the refugee status of the claimants. This would require appropriate funding.

My last suggestion does two things:

First, it confirms the basic decency of Canadians and, second, it discourages snakeheads.

Above all else, Canada must be fair and apply the law evenly irrespective of where refugee claimants are from and how they got here.

I want to close by taking you back to the early 80’s.

Poland was under the Communists and a Polish sailor jumped ship in Vancouver seeking asylum. He did not take the most direct route to freedom and was deported to Poland, God only knowing what fate awaited him.

At the same time the Stastny brothers were signed by the then Quebec Nordiques but somehow they had to get out of Czechoslovakia. They climbed into their Porsche, drove to Vienna, were put up in the finest hotel and flown first class to Canada. They in fact did seek asylum in the first available country but they could never have convinced any fair immigration officer that they had “a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group”.

In fact they were national heroes, lived very well, and only wanted to come to Canada – no other country you will note – so that they could become rich.

Do your job, government, but be fair.

Tags: refugees