Roy Green: Ottawa offers $2,000 sweetener to refugee claiman

[styky]

Roy Green: Ottawa offers $2,000 sweetener to refugee claimants

Roy Green Aug 26, 2011 – 8:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Aug 26, 2011 8:22 AM ET
“Failed” refugee claimants will be offered a fistful of dollars and a one-way ticket home under Ottawa’s Balanced Refugee Reform Act. For being so agreeable the failed refugees may be permitted to make application to return.

If we haven’t lost our minds, we have collided head on with the end of our wits: A person enters Canada fraudulently, is determined to remain here illegally as long as he or she considers the payoff sufficient, is turfed yet also rewarded with a sly understanding that Canada’s welcome mat will be extended in the future.

The process is known as the Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) program. A title modification to Assisted Voluntary Return and Return (AVR&R) Program would make more sense.

How long will it be before $2,000 — the amount available for “reintegration assistance”, in addition to a plane ticket home — is determined to be a little short in the chips department to entice sufficient numbers of the “failed” to come forward, cash in and head out? Not long I suspect. Stand by for the Supplemental Assisted Voluntary Return and Return Funding Initiative (SAVR&RFI) announcement.

We’re assured that the $2,000 lure to leave Canada won’t be sufficiently attractive to overseas refugee cheaters-in-waiting to target Canada in increased numbers. Really? Just how soft is Canada’s refugee system underbody?

Not long ago a friend and Canadian of Mexican origin shared a story of how comedic Canada’s refugee regulations are viewed outside this nation’s borders. He and his wife were enjoying an old Montreal restaurant dinner when they heard Spanish being spoken by a young couple at an adjoining table. Turns out the other couple was also from Mexico. “What are you doing in Canada” my friend asked. “We’re refugee claimants”. My friend, who had worked three jobs to pay for and successfully navigate the immigration bureaucracy for himself and his bride, offered his immigration lawyer’s telephone number, urging the couple to follow his lead and drop their refugee claim.

“Oh no. You don’t understand. We’re newly married and only claimed refugee status in order to have our honeymoon paid for by Canada. We’re going to stay a while longer, then drop our claim and return home”. My friend was and remains furious. His and your tax dollars underwrote the scam.

What completes the mad circle is that when the Mexican honeymooners eventually did drop their refugee claim, the federal government bureaucracy would have stroked them from the “waiting to be resolved” case files and claimed a success.

What Ottawa should have the political fortitude to engage is the Constitutional Notwithstanding Clause and overturn the 1985 Supreme Court of Canada so-called Singh decision, which enshrined Charter of Rights protection to anyone with the means to reach Canada.

This included convicted California serial killer Charles Ng, who prior to his escape from authorities had plotted his route to our shores after carefully considering jurisdictions which offered him the greatest likelihood of state protection from extradition to the United States.

Because Ng faced the death penalty for his vicious streak of murders and rapes, Canada’s Supreme Court had to decide whether this made him ineligible for removal. The court decided appropriately. By one vote.

Ottawa should over-ride the Singh decision, not engage in Assisted Voluntary Returns.

National Post

Roy Green is host of the Roy Green Show on the Corus Radio Network. Read more here.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... claimants/

[winespius]

This particular insanity was tried in Germany in the 80's and 90's to get rid of illegal Turks. Didn't work...they just came back...

[styky]

New immigration laws likely means lawyers busy


By Tom Godfrey ,Toronto Sun

First posted: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 07:38 PM EST | Updated: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 08:02 PM EST
TORONTO - Some Toronto lawyers are expecting business to be brisk as more refugee claimants begin flocking to Canada before tough new immigration laws take affect in June.

A record amount of claimants are expected to flood into Canada from Hungary, Mexico and other refugee-producing nations before Ottawa imposes a list of safe countries from where asylum seekers can apply. In those cases, refugee claims will be decided in 45 days, with limited appeals.......................http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/06/ne ... wyers-busy

[styky]

Kenney should turbo-charge Canada's refugee system
Chris Selley, National Post · Mar. 9, 2012 | Last Updated: Mar. 9, 2012 3:02 AM ET

Jason Kenney might not the best immigration minister Canada has ever had (even if a recent National Post editorial suggested he is), but he's certainly showing more guts than we came to expect from his Liberal predecessors. For many years, conventional wisdom held that to pursue touchy immigration or refugee reforms was to risk the ire of ethnic communities. Now Mr. Kenney pursues those reforms while also spearheading the Conservatives' very successful outreach efforts in some of those same communities. That has to grind the Grits' gears.

It would be wise to hold off on the parades and statues, however. Many of the changes Mr. Kenney champions are very complex works in progress - not least reforms to our refugee system. Stewart Bell's front-page story in Thursday's Post ("RCMP charge first suspect in MV Sun Sea human smuggling case") shows, partly, what he is up against. On Wednesday, 19 months after the MV Sun Sea arrived in British Columbia crammed with Sri Lankan asylum-seekers, the RCMP finally issued the first arrest warrant in connection to that human smuggling operation. That's roughly how long it took for four alleged organizers of a previous refugee boat, the Sun Sea, to be arrested.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bell reported, "refugee hearings for the migrants who travelled aboard the two ships are only now getting underway."................http://www.nationalpost.com/Kenney+shou ... story.html

[styky]

Failed refugee claimants offered $2,000 to leave Canada
By Meagan Fitzpatrick, CBC News
Posted: Jul 5, 2012 10:00 AM ET
Last Updated: Jul 5, 2012 1:06 PM ET
The federal government is offering to pay some failed refugee claimants to leave the country and will pick up the tab for their plane ticket to speed up their departures.

A new pilot project, run by the Canada Border Services Agency and the International Organization for Migration, was launched last week in the Greater Toronto Area. The IOM has been operating similar projects all over the world for more than 30 years....................http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2 ... eturn.html

[RedDog]

This particular insanity was tried in Germany in the 80's and 90's to get rid of illegal Turks. Didn't work...they just came back...

You are correct. The Turks who walked ashore in Newfoundland in alligator shoes wearing Rolex watches declaring themselves refugees and asking for a cab to Toronto as though it were over the next hill had in fact been in Germany for a number of years. In fact, most of the assembly line workers at the BMW motorcycle plant in Berlin are Turkish nationals. Their end destination goal is almost always the United States or Canada by whatever means works.

[LAR]

Visit Canada. All expenses paid.

[styky]

Visit Canada. All expenses paid.

Not only are all expenses paid but we'll send you home with more than you came with.

[styky]

Refugee-opoly
Do not stop, do not pass go, but collect $2,000

peter-worthington
By Peter Worthington ,QMI Agency

First posted: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 07:36 PM CDT | Updated: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 07:47 PM CDT
Talk of a kindly government towards people it wants to be rid of!

The federal government has introduced a plan whereby up to $2,000 and a free one-way air ticket will be provided to “refugees” who volunteer to return to their country of origin.

Roughly 15% of about 100,000 refugee applicants are annually rejected, and if select individuals among this 15% agree to be sent back without going through the appeal process, they may get up to $2,000 each and free transportation.

Even if this may save the state money, it is still remarkably generous.

Not only “generous,” it smacks of bribery — and when you have to bribe people to achieve something, it’s a recognition of defeat, or laziness, or desperation.

Right now there are said to be close to 7,000 refugee applicants who may be entitled to the windfall — some $14 million if the maximum rate holds.

While Canada is a country that can absorb refugees and, indeed, many who came to this country as refugees have enormously benefited both themselves and Canada, it still seems curious that we pay rejects to leave.

It’s pretty hard for a genuine refugee to be rejected by Canada.

Those who are rejected often disappear within Canadian society as “illegals,” and some are clearly security risks.

But this program is not intended to root out spies or secret agents, but to get rid of honest people whom we don’t want here for a variety of reasons.

Canada must be one of the few countries that pays people not wanted as citizens to go home. Britain also does it. Some countries keep unwanted applicants in custody and then pack them off to where they came from.

Not soft-hearted Canada. Even when we catch “illegals” trying to enter with no passports (often phony passports destroyed en route, or “rented” from a broker and returned to the supplier), we tend to release them on the promise they’ll appear before an immigration court to plead their case.

Of course, most disappear when released.

Others, scheduled for deportation, get accommodation, medical treatment, even welfare. Not for nothing does Canada have an international reputation as a sanctuary for spies and war criminals that stretches over the decades.

We even have reports that being in custody damages the refugee’s psyche.

In the bad old days before the Soviet Union collapsed, a Canadian passport was standard spycraft for Soviet espionage.

How many realize that before the war, Yugoslavia’s Tito carried a Canadian passport, as did the guy who assassinated Leon Trotsky in Mexico (acquired from a Canadian killed in the Spanish civil war)?

The first Soviet agent Canada caught after the war was a Polish-born Canadian who was a member of Parliament (Fred Rose).

All these Canadian passports were floating about, even though Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says there was no such thing as a Canadian “citizen” before 1947!

The Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), under whom the repatriation plan will be implemented, is curiously concerned about the “dignity and anonymity” of rejected applicants who’ll get Canadian money “to make a fresh start in your home country.”

What gives here? C’mon guys, worry about Canadians, not refugees!

Lord knows our government tends to ignore Canadians who run into trouble overseas, so why are we so solicitous and generous to those we don’t want as citizens?

Just the Canadian way, I guess.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/07/11/refugee-opoly