The following editorial, one of many, appeared in the National Post and reflect the growing frustration with the impotence of immigration authorities and the politicians who treat these mob with deference, when instead they should be arrested for obstruction of justice. Deport him fast, and charge his supporters to save the rule of law! Otherwise, this will be the first of many cases like this one. This is a joke and it is undermining Canada's reputation as a country of laws.
Deport Laibar Singh
National Post
Published: Friday, January 11, 2008
Canadian citizens dealing with the government at tax time can only dream of being treated with the deference we accord our incoming refugee applicants. Some will contend that this is to our credit, as it shows we are a caring nation. But a case like that of Laibar Singh, the disabled 48-year-old whose supporters have been fending off border agents at the Guru Nanak Sikh temple in Surrey, shows how easily caring can merge into gullibility.
Thousands of Sikh supporters swarmed the Vancouver International Airport on Dec. 10, successfully preventing Mr. Singh from being sent home to Punjab. Now, with another deportation scheduled, they are blocking the authorities' access to Mr. Singh again, turning out by the hundreds in the dead of night to howl imprecations at the timid executors of justice. The question is no longer whether Canada is right or wrong to deport Mr. Singh; it is whether the issue shall be decided by the rule of law or by the mob.
Singh, a widower, arrived in Toronto from India with a forged passport in November, 2003, intending to find work in Canada and send money home to his four children. The Immigration and Refugee Board investigated his claims that he faced false accusations of being a member of a Sikh extremist group, and concluded that his supposed fear of torture at the hands of Punjabi police was "not credible."
Arrangements were made for his deportation from Montreal, but he skipped town and fled to Vancouver. It was there, as a fugitive, that he suffered the aneurysm that has left him paralyzed and unable to look after himself. The government of British Columbia has probably spent close to a million dollars on his care.
The ultimate absurdity is that in today's India Mr. Singh could have been receiving medical attention all along at a fraction of the cost -- assuming the munificence of his B.C.-based sympathizers followed its recipient to South Asia -- with plenty of money left over for the support of his family. But the recalcitrance of his backers has won him another round of hospital time funded by Canadian tax dollars, if he should need it --and then, when he is ready to be shipped off, they can organize another show of force at the airport and find another congenial temple in which to house him.
The danger here is that others will follow his example and create a growing industry of health-care refugees, adding to the universally acknowledged influx of bogus asylum claimants. It would be a dangerous novelty if Laibar Singh's health status became the basis of a "compassionate" exemption to the ordinary rules of refugee adjudication. The avenues of appeal already open to refugee claimants delay some cases by more than a decade.
Meanwhile, Singh's militant friends are turning the informal tradition of treating religious buildings as "sanctuaries" into a sour joke. The whole affair is a complete moral disaster -- one that grows worse with every minute the unfortunate gentleman stays on our soil.
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