Playing Fast and Loose

Canada has been criticized from within and without, for its lax immigration rules, for its laissez-faire attitude toward those whom we permit to settle in the country, for our seeming inability to control our passports. One imagines every country has these problems. Yet it is true that aspiring emigrants from various countries of the world have the impression that entry to Canada is expedited by a relaxed and welcoming immigration tradition.

All these complaints and accusations have likely caused immigration authorities to attempt to become more adept at identifying false claimants for refugee status, and to become more alert to the potential for fraud, using Canadian passports. Such passports are valuable commodities and if they are lost, or sold illegally, they are worth quite a bit to people attempting to enter Canada illegally.

Little surprise, then, that when a Canadian consular official stationed in Kenya interviewed Somali-born Suaad Hagi Mohamud this past spring after Kenyan officials determined that they believed she was an imposter, fraudulently using a Canadian passport on the basis of obvious variances in facial appearance, he was extremely careful in questioning her.

The 31-year-old woman who had left Toronto where she lived with her son for a visit with her mother and her estranged husband in Somalia, was attempting to return to Canada to reunite with her son, when she was apprehended. Which was when the High Commission in Nairobi came to the conclusion she was not whom she represented herself to be.

Following her return to Canada - after having proved whom she was by a DNA test - to the loud cheers of her many human-rights supporters who blamed the government for over-zealousness in victimizing this poor woman, she portrayed herself as ill-done by, abandoned by her government, and ill to boot, as a result of her brief incarceration in Kenya.

Buoyed by her reception back in Canada after her ordeal, and supported by her Canadian lawyer, she is suing the government for $2.6-million in compensation for the "callous and reckless treatment" she suffered. In response to which situation the federal government has filed documents outlining events as they occurred from their official perspective.

The consular official who examined Ms. Mohamud in Kenya claims she was "vague and evasive" during the questioning, and her responses were puzzlingly contradictory and some of them just plain incorrect, betraying a total absence of the kind of personal knowledge which should have identified her beyond a reasonable doubt.

What mother doesn't know her child's date of birth and where he was born? How could she not identify someone listed as a reference on her passport application? A Canadian citizen and having no knowledge of the past or current prime minister's names? Living in Toronto for ten years and not knowing the name of Lake Ontario?

Confusion over which community college she was attending - or meant to attend or for what purpose? Not aware that the acronym TTC represented the Toronto Transit Commission, or that ATS was the Andlauer Transportation Services, a company for which she worked - let alone what she did there in the way of work?

Along with a number of additional failures of recognition of familiar landmarks and other discrepancies; her height among them, as listed on her passport details. How could any credibility be given to a woman with the claims she made, holding a passport in which her photograph did not quite match her physical facial appearance?

Case closed.