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CANADA-REFUGEES Oct-2-2007 (910 words) xxxi
Arrest at U.S. border makes Canadians question use of refugee law
By Michael Swan
Catholic News Service
TORONTO (CNS) -- The arrest of a U.S. refugee worker at the Canadian border has prompted criticism of what some call the misapplication of a Canadian law.
Janet Hinshaw-Thomas, founder of the Pennsylvania-based PRIME-Ecumenical Commitment to Refugees, was charged with people-smuggling as she delivered 12 Haitian asylum seekers to the border post at Lacolle, Quebec, Sept. 28. A court date has been scheduled for Nov. 30.
The 65-year-old grandmother of four has been working with refugees in Pennsylvania since 1983. She is the granddaughter of the late U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and niece of U.S. Cardinal Avery Dulles, who has said he is willing to testify on her behalf.
Hinshaw-Thomas spent a night in jail before being released on $5,000 bail and being warned to be on good behavior.
"I was really well treated in prison. I mean, if you have to go to prison, you want to go to Canada," she told The Catholic Register, Toronto-based national weekly, in an Oct. 1 telephone interview from Lansdowne, Pa. "Not that I want to go. I do not relish the idea."
Immigration lawyers and refugee rights advocates in Canada expressed shock that a law intended to punish criminal gangs who have sent people drifting toward Canadian shores in rusty hulks or lured vulnerable women into the sex trade is being applied to a humanitarian.
"This is clearly an abuse of a provision that was directed to something completely different," said Andrew Brouwer of the Refugee Lawyers Association of Ontario.
If the charges against Hinshaw-Thomas are allowed to stand, all work on behalf of refugees is endangered, said Mary Jo Leddy, founder of Toronto's Romero House, which helps resettle refugees. Under this interpretation of the law, Pope John XXIII would have been guilty of people-smuggling for issuing visas in Istanbul, Turkey, to thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis between 1935 and 1944, Leddy said.
"This woman is a very respected, elderly church worker from Philadelphia, a grandmother I think," said Leddy. "She just simply did what most of us (refugee advocates) do."
"We are now criminalizing the act of assisting refugees," Amy Casipullai, vice president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said in a press statement.
The Refugee Lawyers Association of Ontario claims this is the first time Section 117 of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act has been applied to a nonprofit, charitable, humanitarian worker.
The Canada Border Services Agency could not confirm that it was the first application of the law to a human rights worker or organization, but spokesman Erik Paradis said it was the first time the law had been applied to a human rights advocate in Quebec.
"We had a person bringing in people ... that did not have the proper documentation to enter Canada. This is not legal," said Paradis. "The person knew very well that what she was doing was illegal."
But Leddy said that charging someone because refugees lack proper visas and passports does not make sense.
"Refugees, by definition, don't always arrive with perfect papers. If they did, would they be refugees?" she asked.
Hinshaw-Thomas said on a previous trip to the Quebec border, a guard showed her a copy of the act.
"Since I'm not a Canadian lawyer, I looked it over carefully. I was a little bit in shock," Hinshaw-Thomas said. "It was all in the context of whether I was making any money off this -- which, of course, I'm not."
Paradis said the charges against Hinshaw-Thomas have nothing to do with whether or not she was profiting from the movement of refugees.
Hinshaw-Thomas said she and other volunteers with her organization have taken asylum seekers to the Canadian border for years and had never been told this was illegal. They usually ask the refugees for a contribution to help defray the cost of fuel and other expenses.
She said that five days before making the Sept. 28 trip to the Canadian border, she sent an e-mail to border officials to advise them about the 12 Haitians she would be bringing. No one at PRIME-Ecumenical Commitment to Refugees received any reply to that e-mail, she said.
Charges under Section 117 of the act require the consent of the attorney general of Canada. When the act was being revised in 2001, opposition members of Parliament objected that the clause could be used against humanitarian organizations or individuals. Government officials told the politicians the requirement for consent from the attorney general would protect refugee advocates.
"It's a good lesson for all people involved in politics that unless it's in the law, unless it's entrenched, you never know how it will be used by any government," said Judy Wasylycia-Leis, a member of Parliament from Winnipeg, Manitoba. As the legislation was being considered, Wasylycia-Leis proposed an amendment to Section 117 that would have created an exception for humanitarian workers, but it was defeated in committee.
Despite her run-in with the law, Hinshaw-Thomas praised Canada's refugee system.
"Canada has an outstanding record of fairness to asylum seekers, which the United States does not," she said.
Hinshaw-Thomas began refugee work after being trapped in Afghanistan during the 1979 revolution and Soviet invasion. She said she was unable to get travel documents or leave the country legally.
"I experienced the terror of not knowing when you would be arrested, the terror of not being able to leave the country freely," she said.
END
Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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