No Laughing Matter

"He is effectively stateless, and whether he was rendered stateless by Canada, or whether he's just stateless by virtue of some mishap or loophole or something, the fact is he is stateless, and Canada has added insult to injury by, through the course of his life, telling him 'No, you're not stateless. You're a Canadian. [To deny he is Canadian is to] exile him into oblivion."
"...As a stateless person, [Mr. Budlakoti] lives in a highly precarious situation; he is in legal limbo, at the mercy of the [government of Canada]."
Yavar Hameed, lawyer for Deepan Budlakoti

"This convicted criminal has never been a Canadian citizen. He should not have chosen a life of crime if he did not want to be deported from Canada."
"Mr. Budlakoti is being removed from Canada for 'serious criminality'. He served significant jail time [three years] for trafficking both weapons and drugs. Even though Mr. Budlakoti was born in Canada, he is not a citizen due to the 1977 Citizenship Act which amended the rule to exclude all children of foreign born diplomats born in Canada from Canadian citizenship unless one of the parents was a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. No application for citizenship has ever been made by him or on his behalf."
Alexis Pavlich, spokesperson, Citizenship and Immigration

"They can't deport me to a country I've never been to. I'm stateless in Canada. If I lose, the government has to give me some kind of status. I can't be stateless in Canada. That's what it comes down to. Either give me back my citizenship, or rectify the fact that I'm stateless in Canada caused by the government. There's no possible way to be deported."
Deepan Budlakoti

Deepan Budlakoti: Currently fighting deportation. Yavar Hameed: Lawyer for Mr. Budlakoti Sukanya Pillay: General Counsel, CCLA

Mr. Budlakoti's parents who had applied for citizenship for themselves, but not their son, assuming incorrectly that because he was born in Canada he would automatically have Canadian citizenship, came to Canada to work at the Indian High Commission in Ottawa. They left the employ of the Indian High Commission before their son was born. The former Indian High Commissioner to Canada, S.J.S. Chhatwal, had encouraged his household staff to seek jobs in Canada when he retired in September of 1989. The Budlakoti man and wife then began to work for a doctor in Nepean.

Evidence was given to the court by federal layer Korinda McLaine that Mr. and Mrs. Budlakoti did not surrender their diplomatic passports until January 1990, months after the birth of their son Deepan, nor did they officially leave the employ of the high commission until December 1989. Therefore, since Deepan Budlakoti was born to foreign nationals employed by the Indian High Commission, he did not qualify for Canadian citizenship at birth. He could have applied for citizenship at any time since then, before he committed his criminal acts, but did not.

Mr. Budlakoti, now 24, believes his case is meant to serve as a "tester case to see what they can pull off", which doesn't seem very respectful of the authority of the Government of Canada to enact laws that the government feels represent the best interests of the country and the Canadian public. His case has inspired quite a lot of support from civil liberty groups insisting that he has a right to remain in Canada as a citizen, and that his past 'indiscretions' of a criminal variety should be left firmly in the past. The government feels otherwise.

It is entirely possible that his is indeed a test case; to remove from Canada people who have taken their privilege to live in Canada in a very casual manner, seeing nothing particularly untoward in committing criminal acts whose punishment is that of incarceration. Mr. Budlakoti's propensity to act out seemed at some juncture in his youth to be too much for his parents to cope with. But they have been coping of late with court instructions to have their son live with them while his case for removal as a non-citizen has been under appeal.

He was several times issued a passport, and obviously, given his currently recognized status, in complete error, leading him, his lawyers and his supporters to insist that the error has entirely been the government's and that Mr. Budlakoti should not be made to suffer for a succession of such errors. He was born in October of 1989 with his statement of birth listing the home of Dr. Harsha Dehejia a physician for whom his parents were working at the time of his birth.

And while his lawyers tracked down the former High Commissioner living in India who provided a sworn affidavit in support of the position that his parents were domestic staff until June of 1989, after which time they worked for the Ottawa doctor, the government is in possession of a diplomatic note from India officially declaring his parents' employment with them ended in December of 1989. Despite which, India is not prepared to welcome Mr. Budlakoti as a citizen of their own, leaving him truth to tell, in diplomatic/citizenship limbo.

For a man threatened with the status of being stateless and the prospect of being shuttled off to another country, a man for whom Canada feels no responsibility, feeling it to have been negated by his criminal past, Mr. Budlakoti's adamant insistence that he is being penalized through no fault of his own by a big bad anti-human-rights government demonstrates amply that he feels little need to repent for his past quite faulty free-will decisions.