Stand On Guard For Canada, Ms. Finley, And Canada Will Stand On Guard For Thee
Canada's immigration minister and all Canadians have had to put up with more than the usual share of demands from some ethnic groups in the past few weeks. A Muslim Liberal MP seems to think that Canadians should have gotten used to these refrains, that they should expect many more in the future, and that they are obliged to take them. He refers to this as cultural sensitivity. His arrogance may be blinding him to the mood of many Canadians.
The Muslim MP made his comment in reaction to Citizenship and Immigration's handling of the “Singh” and “Kaur” name issue which Sikhs have subsequently used to make other demands. Following in the Muslim MP's footsteps, they have implied that if Citizenship and Immigration satisfies their demands, they will feel compensated for CIC's alleged mistake with their names.
So, what demand are they now saying Canada must satisfy? The answer is that they want Laibar Singh, who is scheduled to be deported to India on Monday, August 20, to be allowed to stay in Canada. This week-end (August 17 to 20), Sikhs are arranging protests in several centres across Canada to put pressure on Immigration Minister Diane Finley. As usual, they are telling us that he is just one person. The implied question they ask is: What harm will it do to let him stay?
Other cabinet ministers as well as the rest of Canadians have heard this argument before. A couple of months ago, Sikhs in the Brampton area were pressuring the federal government to give pensions to a number of their group who were clearly ineligible to receive pensions. According to them, only a small number of people were involved. And according to them, what harm would it do to throw a few million dollars their way?
Nothing was said, of course, about the fact that all other Canadians have to contribute to the pension system for many years in order to benefit from it. Nor was anything said about the distinct possibility that many of these potential Sikh recipients were some of the 20,000 elderly parents Canada allows in every year—supposedly because it is a cultural practice among Sikhs to have extended families living in the same house. And, of course, nothing was said about the fact that the sponsors of the elderly parents had earlier agreed to support their parents. According to the thinking in some of our ethnic groups, Canada is a bottomless pit of cash and they are going to do everything they can to get all that they can get.
So let's look at Laibar Singh's case and the supposed “negligible cost” these people think he presents to Canada.
(1) First of all, Laibar Singh came to Canada on a forged passport in 2003. Some real refugees have to resort to this tactic, but it has been determined that Mr. Singh is not a real refugee. Furthermore, Mr. Singh has demonstrated that he is not trustworthy. He has violated a deportation order before. To be blunt, like many other fraudulent refugee claimants, he almost certainly intended to be the proverbial “foot in the door”. He had three children under twenty-one years old in India and undoubtedly intended to bring them here. And, as in almost all previous cases, Mr. Singh's children would, not long after their arrival, have tried to sponsor as many relatives as they could.
(2) It is now 2007, four years since he arrived. He has gone through the refugee determination process and been rejected. Contrary to what Canada's immigration industry would have us believe, Mr. Singh and all other rejected refugees are allowed to appeal on several grounds. Mr. Singh got a judicial review and appealed for humanitarian consideration. He was rejected on those grounds also. No one has published the costs to the Canadian public of all of these appeals, but his lawyer, Zool Sulemann, obviously knows. Canadians can rest assured that the processes that Mr.Singh has gone through have not been cheap.
(3) In 2006, Mr. Singh suffered an aneurysm. Most Canadians would not wish such a fate on anyone. The pertinent fact is that he has accumulated a large medical bill in the time since his aneurysm. According to The Vancouver Sun, “He spent five months in Vancouver General Hospital's spine unit last year and six months in the George Pearson Centre on 57th Avenue before he was given sanctuary in the temple. His care at VGH is estimated to have cost more than $400,000, with his stay at Pearson costing $400 a day.” Six months at $400 a day at Pearson probably cost another $72,000. In other words, the medical bills alone amounted to close to half a million dollars.
Mr. Singh's supporters say that Mr. Singh would not receive the same level of treatment in India as he would in Canada. This sounds much like the Brampton Sikhs' demand for pensions. Why should Canadians be asked to pay for their pensions when they are clearly ineligible? Why should Canadians, who are already going to have to pay for Mr. Singh's high medical bills, have to pay even more bills for someone who deliberately defrauded the country? Can we expect his supporters who seem so passionate to assist him, to be as passionate and truly responsible about re-imbursing Canada for expenses that have already been incurred?
(4) The expenses do not end there. According to The Vancouver Sun, “The CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) has booked Fox Flight, a medical services company, to fly Singh to India with medical personnel. The flight, which follows the original deportation arrangements, is expected to cost $68,700, IRB spokeswoman Melissa Anderson said. Anderson said the CBSA is also on the hook for a large bill for the original deportation flight, which was cancelled after Singh went into sanctuary.” So, his total medical-related expenses come close to $600,000. Add legal costs and the real total is probably close to $750,000.
Ironically, a number of immigration lawyers have recently stated that they believe war-criminal refugee claimants are allowed too many appeals. These are honest words for a change, but these lawyers know that their recommendation should also apply to all refugee claimants. Honest Sikhs also would probably agree that it is ludicrous for Citizenship and Immigration and other federal departments to give anything more than summary attention to cases like Mr. Singh's. He and hundreds of thousands of others should have been removed from Canada almost immediately after arriving here.
Canada's Minister of Immigration, Diane Finley, should stand on guard for Canada not just in this case, but on the entire refugee claimant issue. Around 600,000 refugee claims have been made over the past 18 years. As long as Canada remains a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees, genuine refugees should be protected, but they are few and far between in the group who show up here. Most of the claims have been fraudulent and they have resulted in tens of billions of dollars being diverted to this spurious issue rather than being spent on much more deserving social issues in Canada.
Contrary to what Laibar Singh and his supporters might think, Canadians have had it with the absurd claims that not just Laibar Singh, but that most of the roughly 600,000 economic asylum seekers have made since 1989.
Canada's immigration system cannot be a giant foreign aid project, yet it has been turned into that by the bullying, intimidation and litigation efforts of a number of ethnic groups. The notorious Singh decision of 1985 is one of the costliest of those efforts.
Similarly, the legal framework that surrounds Canada's immigration and refugee system cannot be a giant job creation project for Canada's immigration lawyers, consultants and advocates. Yet their bullying, intimidation and litigation of the federal government has resulted in the creation of a huge set of regulations, all of which are designed to drag out the refugee and immigration process for their benefit. The result has been that Canada's immigration industry has created virtual sinecures for themselves. This is virtual life-long employment at Canadian tax-payers' expense.
The immigration and refugee mess has to be cleaned up once and for all.
Stand on guard for Canada, Ms. Finley, and Canada will stand on guard for thee.
