Sunday August 22, 2004
Churches defy government over sanctuary
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All across Canada, churches are breaking the law. They\’re giving sanctuary to individuals who have been rejected for refugee status. These persons are convinced that if returned to their home countries, they face beatings, torture, or even death.
Since 1993, about 250 people involved in 35 immigration and refugee cases have sought sanctuary in Canadian churches. Immigration officials say there are currently seven cases – one each in Ontario and British Columbia, three in Quebec, and two in Nova Scotia. They involve United, Anglican, and Unitarian churches.
That\’s not very many, out of 37,000 cases awaiting decision. A year ago, the backlog was 52,000 cases. Immigration is proud of that reduction.
In part, they\’ve cut the backlog by streamlining their process. Among other changes, they now have just one adjudicator hearing each case, instead of two. That person\’s ruling is final. There are no appeals.
The government can intervene only if the adjudicator erred in the process. Not to reconsider the evidence, nor for humanitarian concerns. The refugee no longer matters. He or she is now just a statistic.
Lacking any other recourse
\”Times New Roman\”> The churches have argued, insistently, that this ruthlessly arbitrary process is flawed. Richard Goldman wrote, in the Montreal Gazette, “It is a simple roll of the dice whether a refugee\’s destiny will be determined by a well-qualified member or by a political patronage appointee with no prior knowledge of law or refugee matters.”
Parliament itself ruled, in 2001, that there should be an appeal process. The Immigration Department has not yet provided one.
So, lacking any other recourse, a few recent claimants have sought sanctuary in churches.
Sanctuary is an ancient and honourable tradition. At its root, it recognizes that governments are not the ultimate authority. God is.
It also recognizes the separation of church and state. The church is not a servant of the state.
Significantly, the most sacred part of a church building is called its sanctuary.
Long-honoured tradition
\”Times New Roman\”> The concept of sanctuary goes back at least to biblical times. Adonijah, a rival for Solomon\’s throne, claimed and received sanctuary by grasping “the horns of the altar.”
In England, King Ethelbert enacted the first laws about sanctuary around 600 A.D. Queen Elizabeth Woodville, consort of King Edward IV, twice claimed sanctuary for herself in Westminster.
Sanctuary was not always honoured. But when four of King Henry II\’s knights slaughtered Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, the murder generated so much outcry that Becket was made a saint within three years.
Immigration minister Judy Sgro has criticized the churches for providing sanctuary to refugees. She called on the churches to put their duty to government first.
In effect, she wants to make God subject to national law.
Sgro seems to have conveniently forgotten that she owes her own privilege of parliamentary immunity to the concept of sanctuary. The British parliament first convened in the chapel of Westminster in London. Within that sanctuary, parliamentarians could speak freely without fear of reprisal.
She has also forgotten that diplomatic asylum derives from the same root. Back in 1979, the Canadian ambassador to Iran, Kenneth Taylor, rescued six Americans by granting them asylum. Had Iranian authorities stormed the Canadian embassy to arrest those hostages, Sgro\’s predecessors would have considered it an international outrage.
Sgro, however, sent the Quebec police to arrest Mohammed Cherfi within the sanctuary of St. Pierre United Church — the first violation of sanctuary in Canadian history.
Upsetting the bureaucratic process
\”Times New Roman\”> She has further characterized these refugees as threats to Canadian security.
In fact, the only thing they threaten is her Ministry\’s bureaucratic processes. Immigration itself indirectly admits this, when it cites the case of the Borja family of Colombia. After six months confined in a Unitarian church, the Borjas agreed to leave Canada.
From the United States – which, despite its paranoia about terrorists, let them in – the Borjas applied for immigration status. And were accepted.
If they were threats to security as refugees, why were they suddenly acceptable as landed immigrants?
The real crime of sanctuary seekers is that they foul up Immigration\’s paperwork.
“There is a process available to individuals,” Sarah Bain, an aide to former Immigration Minister Denis Coderre, told Canadian Press. “Going into a church is not one of the steps in the procedure.”
Mohammed Cherfi was ordered deported because he failed to report a change of address. He also participated in a demonstration against human-rights violations in Algeria.
Presumably, then, millions of Americans who marched against the Vietnam war are now also considered threats to Canadian security.
Governments are not God
\”Times New Roman\”> “I am not a terrorist,” says Menen Ayele, who insists that she was beaten for almost three weeks in Ethiopia for opposing her government. “I am not a bad woman. But I fear for my life if I go back.”
Similarly, Sanja Pecelj fears being returned to Kosovo. She came to Canada legitimately, employed as a translator. When ethnic violence in Kosovo continued, she attempted to stay. She has spent more than a year in a basement room in St. Mark\’s Anglican Church in Halifax.
Sgro claims that Ayele and Pecelj are lying about the danger in their home country. If so, I wonder why they would voluntarily prefer imprisonment in a church basement.
The churches, for their part, take a risk in offering sanctuary. It costs them money. It disrupts their normal functioning. And it is not easy for any congregation of respectable citizens to deliberately defy their federal government.
Congregations only grant sanctuary after carefully checking the claimants\’ stories.
“Our research is far more conscientious and thorough than members of the Immigration and Refugee Board,” said Mary Jo Leddy of the Ontario Society for Refugees.
I don\’t know the board\’s adjudicators. I do know Leddy. I trust her more than any bureaucrat appointed to feed refugees through a sausage machine.
So, good for the churches. Someone needs to keep reminding government ministries that they are not God.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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