Tamils playing us for fools
If 71% of the refugees here in Canada feel safe enough to return for a vacation in Sri Lanka, how bad can things actually be?
By Ezra Levant, QMI Agency
Last Updated: August 22, 2010 4:06pm
How bad is life back in Sri Lanka for Tamil refugees?
Are they tortured? Do they have a well-founded fear of persecution?
Are things so bloody bad over there that we have to let a boatload of them into Canada, just because they showed up?
Thats what were told by immigration lawyers, bleeding heart politicians and fashionable journalists who dont believe Canada should have any borders at all.
But what about actual Tamil refugees here in Canada? How bad do they think life is back home?
As QMIs investigative report shows, 71% of Tamil refugees here in Canada think things back in Sri Lanka are good enough that theyve gone back home for a vacation.
Canadian immigration officials randomly surveyed 50 Tamils already here, who are trying to sponsor more people to come over, too. Of those would-be sponsors, 31 are refugees. And 22 of those admit to going back to Sri Lanka.
That would be like Jews who fled Nazi Germany deciding to go back to Berlin to hear the opera. Sorry, it just doesnt add up.
The Tamils are playing us for fools. Theyre not genuine refugees. Genuine refugees dont go back to a country thats persecuting them.
The benign interpretation is that they went back for a vacation. But theres the real possibility that some went back to help the Tamil Tiger terrorist group wage its war against Sri Lanka.
The no-borders left has argued that because Canada accepted 85% of Tamil refugee claims last year, thats proof Sri Lanka is a bad place.
But that high number doesnt tell us anything about Sri Lanka, a place that the UN High Commissioner on Refugees says is so much improved that no country in the world should assume that Tamils are refugees.
No, what that 85% number tells us is that our Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), the independent judges who are supposed to screen out bogus refugees, is totally broken.
The IRB judges are letting almost all the Tamils in. And many of those they reject stay here anyway. According to Sheila Fraser, the auditor general, 63,000 would-be refugees who have been ordered deported from Canada are still here, and the government has lost track of where 41,000 of them are.
The 85% acceptance figure was suspicious enough, based on the UNs comments. But now that we know 71% of Tamil refugees travel back and forth to Sri Lanka, its more than a scandal. Its wholesale fraud.
If Jason Kenney, the immigration minister, was responsible for that 85% acceptance rate, and the 71% fraud rate, the opposition would rightfully call on him to resign. But its the IRB judges, not Kenney, who make the decisions.
Brian Goodman is the chair of the IRB. Its his job to make sure his judges are competent and skeptical. At least one of those components is obviously missing. Goodman must go.
But thats just the start. The only way to restore confidence in the system and respect for the value of Canadian citizenship is to have an audit of every Tamil refugee to see if they, too, took vacations back to Sri Lanka, after swearing they were terrified to be there. Those who went back should be denaturalized stripped of their immigration status and deported immediately.
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In my last column I erroneously stated that the 1985 Supreme Court immigration ruling called Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration was decided on a three-three tie. Thats incorrect all six judges gave foreigners Charter rights to sue their way into Canada. The judges split 3-3 on their reasoning, but they all supported it.
Question: Do you think those six judges, 25 years ago, could foresee the refugee gong show in 2010? The Singh decision is a straitjacket stopping Canada from defending our borders and our laws.
Their obsolete ruling needs to be suspended, using the notwithstanding clause of our Charter.
Lawyers and politicians would hate that. Good.
Read Levants blog at ezralevant.com.
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In Depth :
Hard to revoke bogus refugee claims
Refugees go home for holidays
Refugees go home for 'legitimate' reasons: Lawyer
'Send the Tamils home': poll
UN says Sri Lanka situation improving
We've been duped by the Tamils: editorial
