WHY SHOULD HE BE OUR PROBLEM?

See this story from the Toronto Star. This is quite dumb. Taxpayers should not be saddled with such a crazy merry-go-round for a convicted criminal who should have been expelled a long time ago. This typifies what is wrong with the immigration system: we spend time and resources on people who should not be here, and make those who should be here wait for years....go figure.

Court brings deportee back

Order issued after schizophrenic man dumped at Jamaican airport was found wandering naked

December 10, 2007

Nicholas Keung

IMMIGRATION/DIVERSITY REPORTER

A man with schizophrenia, deported to Jamaica this year, has been brought back to Canada under an unusual court order, after enforcement officials failed to take him to a hospital there for psychiatric care as promised.
Instead, Christopher Smith, 44, was dumped at the airport. He was later found by a relative, "naked, roaming the streets of Kingston," according to an affidavit. He was taken to hospital 10 days later.
"He lost all his identification. He didn't have his medication. His family was frantic because they couldn't get in touch with him at the (Jamaican) hospital," said his Toronto lawyer, Mary Lam, who took the rare step in May of asking the federal court to invalidate a deportation that had already been executed.
Smith, who had been stripped of his landed-immigrant status because of criminal convictions, was escorted back to Toronto by Canada Border Services Agency last month at the order of Justice Frederick Gibson. The ruling was unusual because the condition of deportees is rarely monitored once they've left Canadian soil.
"There's usually no way of checking (on that) after the fact. You never know what happens to the deported," noted Lam. "Fortunately, my client has a family in Canada who cares about him and set the case in motion."
Smith would have been just another of the many deportees Canada ships back to Jamaica each year – 217 in 2005 and 224 last year – if not for the mishandling of his mental health care.
An auto mechanic who joined his family here in 1987, he had never applied for citizenship, which would have given him an absolute right to remain regardless of his criminal convictions.
According to his lawyer, Smith has a record going back to 1991, but involving only simple assaults or mischief resulting in suspended, conditional or one-day sentences.
"He's paranoid of conspiracy, thinking that people were after him. When he's not on medication, it causes him to act in that manner," explained Lam, adding that her client's mental illness emerged as early as 1979, and he had spent time in mental health institutions.
Smith's trouble with the law finally warranted an order from Citizenship and Immigration Canada in October 2003 to have him stripped of his status and removed from the country. After a two-year legal battle, the order was revoked by the Immigration and Appeal Division on condition that he kept a clean record. But Smith got himself into trouble again and lost his immigrant status a second time.
At an emergency court application to stay his April 5 deportation, enforcement officials assured the judge that "Once (Smith) arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, he will be transported from the airport to the emergency department at the Kingston Public Hospital on North St."
In fact, the court found, the Canadian officials simply advised Smith of his medical appointment and asked Jamaican authorities to assist him in attending it.
He is said to have had only four days' supply of medication on him.
Lam said his return was delayed by Immigration Minister Diane Finley's request for a psychiatric report, and then hurricane damage at his hospital. He has been detained at an immigrant holding facility since returning on Nov. 23.
Under the ironies of Canada's immigration practices, he may not be here much longer. Two weeks before his federally funded return, Lam learned that another removal proceeding had already been initiated. He's due for another federally funded deportation on Jan. 18.
"Basically I was told: Get him ready to leave, again," said Lam, who plans to ask the court to stay the removal as her client reapplies for landed status on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.