The US has long stood as a shining beacon for refugees from around the world, fleeing tyranny and torture and death. While some have grumble about people exploiting the system, the Statue of Liberty and the poem at its heart have truly stood for what America represents.
Or at least they used to.
The United States is not a safe country for refugees, the Federal Court said Thursday as it ruled that Canada will no longer have the right to turn back asylum seekers at the border.
In the surprise judgment, the court found that Safe Third Country Agreement breaches the rights of asylum seekers under the United Nation Refugee Convention or the Convention Against Torture.
The three-year-old agreement denies refugees who have landed first in the U.S. the right to later seek protection in Canada, and vice versa. It has allowed Canada to automatically send refugee claimants at the border back to the United States. There, they are usually either detained or deported.
Part of the argument in the Canadian courts was that it discriminated against asylum speakers based solely on how they tried to get to the country. But there’s another reason for the decision.
Citing the example of Maher Arar, Justice Michael Phelan also noted that the U.S. has not been compliant with the Refugee Convention or CAT (Convention Against Torture).
“… The United States’ policies and practices do not meet the conditions set down for authorizing Canada to enter into a STCA,” Phelan wrote in his 126-page decision.
“The U.S. does not meet the Refugee Convention requirements nor the [UN] Convention Against Torture prohibition (the Maher Arar case being one example). Further, the STCA does not comply with the relevant provisions of the Charter.”
Arar was the Canadian who was stopped by U.S. officials in 2002 at a New York airport and sent to the Middle East to be interrogated as an alleged al Qaeda suspect.
I’m sure there will be some folks happy that the US has a reputation for being “tough,” especially if it keeps that “wretched refuse” from teeming on our shores. (And, yes, those folks are echoed by some Canadian comments to the news post.) But for me, all I can say is, “For shame.”