Crime and Punishment

"The rights of the individual are not just for people who look good and come in Hollywood packaging.  Rights are supposed to be for all of us, including disenfranchised youth who go off the rails.  I'm speaking from the heart when I say this is a terrible situation.
"My guy is about to be given the boot from Canada.  All of the ships have left port.  I have exhausted all legal avenues and there's nothing I can do to stop his deportation."
Peter Stieda, immigration lawyer

 It is, without doubt, a bit of a heart-breaker.  It does describe an unusual situation when a couple from East India arrive in Canada to work as household staff for India's High Commission.  And while performing their work for the then-high commissioner, they had a child.  And assumed, wrongly, that since their child was born in Canada he would be granted automatic citizenship. 

They should have made specific enquiries to be certain that what they assumed was correct.  It was not.  In the Citizenship Act there is a rarely used provision that holds if parents are foreign diplomats or under the employ of foreign diplomats at the time of birth, the child is not to be considered a Canadian citizen.  How could they know? 

They lived with the illusion that their Canadian-born son had been automatically gifted with citizenship as a result of having been born in Canada. They left the employ of the High Commission two months after their son was born.  And they remained in Canada as landed immigrants. 

And when the parents applied in 1997 for citizenship for themselves they failed to apply on behalf of their son whom they were confident was already in possession of Canadian citizenship.  Deepan Budlakoti's father even wrote on the back of his own citizenship application that his son was already a Canadian citizen.

The 26-year-old does have a Canadian birth certificate and a Canadian passport, issued in error.  But he has run afoul of the law and is being deported to India, a foreign country to him, one he has never set foot in.  "I was born in Canada.  It's my country.  I don't know anyone in India and like I said, I don't even speak the language."  How could he ever imagine in his darkest nightmares that illegal action on his part would result in his removal from Canada?

As an adolescent he chafed at his parents' house rules.  There was a time, at age 12 when he was a runaway and slept in city parks, breaking into homes in the absence of the occupants to shower, to prepare meals, and to hoist whatever he could manage to haul out the back door.  But then he saw reason, returned to high school, began a small renovation company of his own.


Until 2009 when he was arrested by Ottawa police, then pleaded guilty to illegal transfer of a firearm, and with trafficking in cocaine.  He is scheduled to be released from federal prison after serving out a two-year sentence.  After which time he will be escorted to a jail in Toronto to await deportation. 

His lawyer has done everything within his means to try to help his client avoid what appears to be inevitable; banishment from the only home he has ever known.

The punishment for commission of a serious social transgression under the law should indeed reflect the nature of the crime involved.  But the outcome in this particular instance does seem unduly harsh.