Opportunity Trifled Away

"I'm not this bad person they're making me out to be. To be honest, I'm really scared to go back. I'm scared of turning my whole family upside down."
Keong Tang, Vietnamese-Canadian

 

Keong Tang came to Canada as part of Project 4000 in 1979 when he was 12. Now he is being deported.  Photograph by: Bruno Schlumberger , Ottawa Citizen

 

It might have occurred to Mr. Tang, 47, that he long, long ago managed all by his own devices chosen of free will -- spurning examples he saw around him of people living decent and responsible lives -- succeeded in 'turning my whole family upside down'. It cannot have been a pleasure for his hard-working parents who managed to escape their country's conflict situation, brought into Canada from refugee camps in a humanitarian "boat people" rescue, to see their oldest son become a social vagrant.
 
And it can be difficult for the onlooker to feel sympathy for people who have been given a life raft when the ocean of dreadful circumstances has threatened to swamp them into a sea of sorrow and danger, when they choose to slight the opportunity and in so doing, commit to a failure spectacularly their own. At one juncture, Mr. Tang worked alongside his father when they were new to the country, washing dishes, while his mother worked as a chambermaid.

Difficult, honest, ill-paid work, but work nonetheless, to augment what they received in assistance from the church groups which had worked hard to bring them to Canada and to assist them in making the cultural-social adjustment from the familiar to the unknown; the dangerous to the secure, as it happened. Mr. Tang, though he was exposed as a young boy to the country's education system, never did master complete literacy.

Nor did he, at age 18, when it was required of him to take a citizenship test, pass it. His mother failed the test the first time, but she persisted and she passed the second time around. By that age, it appears, Mr. Tran had a drug habit, and he engaged in criminal behaviour to support his drug dependency. He committed numerous break-and-enter violations, he had uncontrolled anger issues leading to charges of assault.

A deportation order was brought against him in 1994.

It is now being acted upon. The current government has made it an issue to deport those living in Canada who are not citizens and who have been convicted of committing crimes while in Canada. Mr. Tang has been convicted on a number of occasions, of theft and of assault. When he dropped out of high school he "partied" with friends, using acid, mushrooms, hash, cocaine, crack.

He was jailed on a few occasions, the longest, a ten-month sentence. He was last convicted of a criminal offence in 2009. Among his convictions are a number of assaults and breaches. Not quite the picture of a responsible, mature individual. He now supports himself with small contract jobs; driveway sealing, landscape work, roofing.

And, he says, he looks to the care of his elderly parents. He is one of four children in the family.

Mr. Tang says, through his lawyer, that he had been sexually abused when he was thirteen by a member of the church that had sponsored his family. A retired man who gave countless hours to aiding the family adjust to life in the country, who guided them and aided them in managing to do routine things like banking. And who Mr. Tang says, took him on out-of-town trips. And who abused him.

"He was coming around helping my father. I couldn't really say much. My father really needed his help", he said. Mr. Tang described doing chores at the volunteer's house, a man who had become a close and trusted friend of the family. His lawyer argues on his behalf that "It's a textbook case of an abused child acting out", to explain his anti-social and illicit behaviour. And that he was unable to complete an anger-management course because he was unable to read the course material properly.

Vietnam has recently made travel documents available for former "stateless" citizens who had fled the country during the mass evacuation after the end of the war. "Instead of saying this is a problem that arose here in Canada and that we should be treating it, they're not. They're saying this is your problem now", said his lawyer in his client's defence.

Little wonder, given the above, that people come away from the story feeling utterly conflicted. "I could not survive there. It's like going to a whole new country", said Mr. Tang, concerned that he might end up in a work camp as a result of his criminal past and drug use.