Harper’s new crack down on smugglers

It is all in the framing.  The crack down is described as a way to deal with “human smugglers.” 

The image conjured is of boat-loads of potential terrorists who may land on our shores.

What if you shift the frame?  Could they sell a crack down on refugees? On desperate people escaping persecution?

What if the human smuggler is a Schindler?  What if the refugees are escaping Hitler?

Of course, when a boatload of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany attempted to land in Canada in 1939, the government of MacKenzie King refused to allow them to land – sending them back to Hitler’s Germany.  So, this law is more compassionate than that.  With this law, we would allow them to land and be kept in jail for a year.

What about more recent refugees? It wasn’t that long ago that the “boat people” from South Vietnam were welcomed into communities across Canada. 

Why this crack-down?

It’s all politics.
 
On the facts, most refugees arrive via airports, not boats.

The idea that refugees are “jumping the queue” is nonsense.  By definition, people escaping persecution cannot go to a consulate in their country of origin and ask for permission to leave.  I used to practice some immigration and refugee law.  I remember one young sailor I represented who jumped ship in Halifax.  He was escaping the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu in Communist Romania.  There was no queue to escape persecution.  Desperate measures define the refugee experience.  I represented him as he went through the refugee process, finding a place to live and then getting permission to work.  What rationale makes it better for him to have spent a year in jail?

Why should refugees arriving as a group by boat get different treatment than refugee claimants who arrive at an airport? 

Amnesty International has made it clear this act violates Canada’s international obligations under three treaties: the 1951 Refugee Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  It also violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Short term political spin makes for lousy policy.  I was pleased to see that The Province has editorialized that this move is rushed and catering to a perceived panic about boatloads of Tamils. 

It needs to be rewritten and reworked to put in place sensible approaches to refugees and sensible punishments (most of which we already have) for those who prey on them.