Should we let non-citizen visitors remain in Canada on compassionate grounds?

There have been many instances where non-citizens who visited Canada have been deported. In some occasions, they claimed that there were compassionate reasons why they should have been permitted to remain in Canada but despite that, they were deported anyway. In this piece, I will give my readers background info on the law and some of the cases that were before the courts and my own thoughts on this complex issue.

In this piece, I am only dealing with visitors who have claimed that they were visiting friends or relatives or who merely wished to vacation in Canada and then illegally remained in Canada after their visitor’s visas expired.

A Canadian visitor’s visa is issued by our embassies, consulates and high commissions outside of Canada to those who are required by our laws to apply for one before visiting Canada.

The visas are square and brownish in colour and are glued permanently to passports. These visas have a date of issue and a date of expiry. The visa merely authorizes the visa holder to appear at a Canadian port-of-entry before the expiry date shown on the visa to request permission to visit our country. A single entry visa allows the person to seek admission once before the expiry date. A multiple entry visa allows the holder to seek admission multiple times before the visa expires.

The visa does not guarantee admission to Canada nor does the expiry date on the visa determine how long the person will get to stay here. It is the officer at the port-of-entry, not the officer at the embassy etc., who decides if the person will be allowed to enter Canada and, if so, for how long.

If the port-of-entry officer believes the visa holder should be allowed into Canada he/she will stamp the passport. It is this stamp which authorizes the visitor’s entry and determines how long the visitor can stay. The stamp alone allows the person to visit Canada for 6 months. However, the port-of-entry officer can shorten this period by specifying an earlier date, by pen, just below the stamp. This is the date the person must leave Canada unless they have applied for an extension prior to that date. On occasions, visitors who possessed the visa have been denied entry to Canada.

There are however many countries where visitors come from who do not require a visitor’s visa to enter Canada as a visitor.

In September 1975, I met my Japanese-born wife when I was participating at a United Nations crime conference at the UN Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. I invited her to come to Canada with me and when we arrived at the airport in Toronto, I explained to the port-of-entry officer that she was a visitor to Canada at my request and that she would be living with me for a while. He gave her the OK and he stamped on her visa that she could remain in Canada until December 24th, 1975.

By that date, I concluded that I would probably want to marry her but I wanted a bit more time to decide. Further, she too wanted a bit more time to make that decision so we requested that she be given an extension. Our request was granted but we were told that if we weren’t married by May 30th 1976, she would have to leave the country on that date. We were married on May 29th and she was given permission to remain in Canada. Three years later she received her citizenship papers and at the time of this writing, we have been married 33 years and have two daughters and four granddaughters and she has been working at her present employment for the past 30 years. Unfortunately, not every visitor gets to stay so easily.

A 69-year-old blind grandmother was scheduled to be deported to Poland on August 23rd 2009 after living in Canada for 11 years illegally. She was completely devastated to be leaving her two children and six grandchildren. Her family members are concerned about the lack of medical care and social services available in Poland since there's only one nurse to service thousands of sick in the area surrounding the town where she lives. The woman arrived in 1998 as a visitor and never left. But for her, there was no last-minute reprieve. Stefania Magdziak was put on a plane to her native Poland last night, days after she lost her appeal to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds after a failed refugee claim.

One cannot but feel sympathy for this woman and her family but the Canadian authorities were right to deport her. If she were permitted to stay, Canada would be plagued with visitors who would come to Canada not to visit but to illegally stay in our country permanently.

There is a procedure in place nowadays that people of other nations are to follow if it is their wish to come in Canada to live in our country. Those who don’t want to wait their turn for admittance (sometimes the wait can last for many years) jump the cue line by coming in as visitors and then remaining here illegally while hiding from the immigration authorities.

Now I know what my readers are thinking. How come my wife was able to get permission to remain in Canada permanently after being a visitor for only 8 months? In those days, that wasn’t as much of a problem as is it today. If I tried to get her permanent status nowadays after her only being here for eight months, it wouldn’t happen. She would have to return to Japan and apply to come to Canada though a Canadian embassy or consulate in Japan and wait two or three years like everyone else. If instead of applying to the immigration officials for a permanent status for my wife, she merely hid from them, as soon as she was caught, she would be deported. I doubt that the authorities would offer any sympathy to her since a refugee claim would be meaningless and I doubt that she could stay in Canada on compassionate grounds either even if our two children were born prior to her being caught.

Nowadays, an applicant for permanent status must apply in the country of his or her residence, or country of nationality or the country where he or she have been legally admitted for at least one year.

It really isn’t a problem deporting visitors who commit crimes in Canada. On July 28, 2008, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) confirmed the deportation of an Ottawa man associated with street gangs. Remy Maliragora, 27, was returned to Rwanda under escort by CBSA Officers. Maliragora had been involved in criminal behaviour in Canada and convicted of several offences including: assault, possession of a stolen vehicle, carrying a concealed weapon, uttering threats, assault causing bodily harm, forcible entry and breach of probation. Maliragora is the second member of the Ledbury-Banff Crips street gang to be deported that year. In January, 2008, CBSA Officers removed 23-year-old Sharmarke Ali to Ethiopia. No one really shed a tear when these undesirables were kicked out of Canada.

The ability to remove people is vital to protecting the safety and security of Canada, maintaining the integrity of the immigration program and ensuring fairness for those who come to this country lawfully after patiently waiting for many years.

When Paul and Barbara-Anne Chapman arrived in Canada in July 2005 with their two children, they expected to be welcomed with open arms. The British natives were planning to immigrate permanently to Nova Scotia, open a small business, hire up to 25 local people and move into a newly purchased home in Fall River. But instead of a warm reception, Mr. Chapman says they have been told to pack their bags and leave the country because their daughter Lucy has a mental disability. The seven-year-old has Angelman syndrome, a rare chromosome disorder. She is unable to speak and has the mental capacity of a three-year-old but requires no additional medications or physical assistance.

Perhaps she didn’t need additional medication of physical care while her parents could support her but suppose they couldn’t support her because their business went bust and they went bankrupt. If that happened, the taxpayers of Canada would then be supporting the invalid woman for the rest of her life.

However in October 2005, just months after they were turned away, the disabilities section of the Immigration Act was modified. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that government officials should consider each case individually when determining whether a family that includes a dependent with a disability should be allowed to immigrate to Canada. In light of the new development, the parents reapplied to move permanently to Nova Scotia under the province’s immigrant nominee program. After a grueling two-year process, they finally received approval from the provincial government.

Had they arrived strictly on a visitor’s visa, they wouldn’t have been permitted to remain in Canada.

Because of the need to attract settlers in Canada, there were basically no systematic immigration policies before the late 19th century. Immigration and settlement basically originated from Europe and the number of immigrants from poor countries of the South only rose when immigration policies were liberalized in the 1960s and 1970s through, for example, the introduction of the points system.

Before the end of the Second World War, many of the Canadian soldiers who spent several years in Great Britain while waiting for the eventual Normandy attack of June 1944, married British women and after the war ended, they were permitted to bring their wives to Canada.

In 1973, Canada established a temporary visa system for domestic workers, known as the “Temporary Employment Authorization Program.” The 1973 program marked a regression in the rights accorded to foreign domestic workers. The program only allowed the women to stay in Canada as ‘visitors’ on the condition that they remained employed as a domestic worker. If they were no longer employed as a domestic worker, Canada could deport them. Canada allowed the women to renew their visas annually, however the domestic workers had no real prospect of converting their status from visitors to immigrants. Clearly, the 1973 program marked these foreign domestic workers as only temporary sources of cheap labour, akin to the ‘guest workers’ of Europe. Nowadays, if they work in Canada as a domestic for two or more years, they may apply for Canadian citizenship.

Canada's Department of Citizenship and Immigration admitted in 2005 that many failed refugee claimants had gone into hiding and that visitors have overstayed their visas. It had some idea of the number of failed refugee claimants who had not been deported. But because it did not keep records on people who overstayed their visitor’s visas, it claims it could not estimate the total number of illegals currently in Canada. Estimates of illegals in Canada varied widely. Some believed that a minimum of several hundred thousand people live in Canada illegally. Critics emphasize that illegals are a serious issue because these people occupy jobs that unemployed Canadians should have.

Literally millions of extended family relatives are on the current waiting list that extends into the next 20 to 25 years. A number of people on that waiting list believe they are entitled to enter the country now because they think they have met the criteria to be in Canada. Although their turn hasn't come up on the list, hundreds of thousands of people from the migration list have come to the country early and illegally by claiming that they are merely coming to Canada to visit their relatives. Once here, they then remain here illegally and later when caught, they ask to remain on compassionate grounds. When their requests are denied, then the tears begin flowing.

Canada has a policy that it will deport any visitor who arrives in Canada under the pretext that they were merely visitors when in fact, they intend to stay here illegally and if they plead to remain in Canada on compassionate grounds and are nevertheless deported, the message will get across to many of their kind that overstaying their visits won’t work in the long run.

As I see it, the Canadian authorities should remove these people from the immigration waiting list to immigrate to Canada. Our nation wants and hopes that those immigrants who are permitted to come to Canada to live are not deceitful and dishonest. Anyone who comes to Canada to live under the pretext that he or she is merely a visitor does not deserve our sympathy. To permit them to remain is a slap in the face of the thousands of honest applicants who have waited for years to receive government permission to move to Canada to live.