Threaten Canada; Adieu

Under international treaty and human rights obligations the United Nations refugee agency urges the advanced and wealthy countries of the world to absorb refugees who have fled their homes as a result of war; man-made or natural upheavals or disasters.  As a good citizen-nation of the world Canada subscribes to express our own humanity by welcoming and absorbing those without homes.

After having signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, Canada takes its obligations seriously, to aid and support those without homes.  And as well to urge their countries of origin to demonstrate their own humanity by respecting human rights, while undertaking to welcome the allotted number of refugees assigned through the convention.

Through the obligation to accept refugees Canada takes on trust that those refugees will be grateful to Canada for offering an opportunity to establish a new life for themselves in a country that offers what was denied them in their birth country; comfort and security.  Like the adoption of a defenceless child by a childless couple, countries are urged not to return those whom they have accepted to their countries of origin.

Unlike the procedures related to immigration, there are no opportunities to interview would-be emigrants, to assess their potential to meld into the receiving country's system of laws and values.  Or to weigh whether they have needed employment skills.  It must be taken on trust that those who are offered the opportunity to advance their personal fortunes in a new country, will attempt to do so, embracing that country's way of life.

In exceptional circumstances, a refugee may be deemed to be possessed of such a dangerously violent character that he represents a direct threat to the society and the other individuals within it.  One such person was Sharmarke Mohamed, a refugee from Somalia who arrived in Canada at age 27 from "one of the most dangerous places on earth".

In the two decades he has lived in Canada the man has caused huge disruptions in other peoples' lives through his violently undisciplined character.  Addicted to drug and alcohol, his crimes are considered to be so problematical and dangerous that Justice Sean Harrington ruled he must be returned to Somalia.  That ruling was upheld by chief Justice Pierre Blais of the Federal Court of Appeal.

Living in Vancouver, the Somali Canadian was convicted of ever-increasingly violent crimes.  He was married twice in Canada, with two children resulting from each of those failed marriages.  Convicted of assault, repeated bank robbery, assault with weapons, assault causing bodily harm, and other crimes. 

Asylum was originally granted Sharmarke Mohamed who claimed persecution as a result of his politics.

Opposed to the regime of Mohamed Siad Barre, he was engaged in violent confrontations of a political nature in Somalia.  When he arrived in Canada in 1990, Immigration officials had hope that living in Canada, he would leave the violence he was engaged in behind, back in Somalia.  That didn't prove to be the case.

He proved to be an increasing danger to the public and continually engaged in serious criminal acts.  Prosecuting lawyers claim he has been given special consideration because of the kind of political correctness that suffuses Western societies, bending over backward to accommodate Muslims, to avoid being labelled anti-Muslim.

And the man himself demonstrates just how well he understands the Western conscience, as it confronts itself through the looking glass of the underprivileged, of those whose heritage, ethnicity, culture and religion evokes empathy and compassion in the hearts of the advantaged West.  He claimed that the continued detention he was under as a result of his criminal convictions "violated his Charter rights under Section 7".

He claimed further that deporting him back to the country of his birth which is no longer quite the "lawless state" that it once represented, would "jeopardize" his life and security.  His concern for his personal safety and quality of life evidently was not that dreadfully acute that he was willing to discipline himself to stop drinking and using drugs, and leave his life of crime.

His facile comfort with Canadian assurances under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms demonstrates the degree to which he has become familiar with and comfortable within, those assurances, feeling himself entitled to call upon them to ultimately deter the Government of Canada from its deportation plans.

Originally Immigration authorities had ordered his deportation in 2000.  He fought that deportation with all the legal means at his disposal.  He was finally deported on April 16.  Joining the fate of others who, though not sharing refugee status, remained in Canada illegally when their claims were turned down, and remained in Canada while committing crimes here, until they were detained and finally deported.

"We are not obliged to keep someone here who is a danger to the public.  Mr. Mohamed's counsel raised every point which could possibly be raised to support the proposition that his risk was personal."  Justice Sean Harrington

There is no reason whatever that Canada should suffer the presence of those who represent an ongoing threat to others within society.  Anyone who takes his own responsibility to become a valuable member of society, respecting its conventions and laws as lightly as he has done, is patently undeserving of being allowed to remain.

Misfits, social and legal, who arrive in Canada from abroad and who become predators and thugs here, continuing what they initiated in their places of birth, should learn, if they abrogate their responsibility in a fair exchange, that such behaviour simply will not be tolerated.