Eight years on, Burmese refugee still waits for landed status

Source:http://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/immigration/article/885383--eight-years-on-burmese-refugee-still-waits-for-landed-status

Ler Wah Lo Bo fought against the autocratic regime in Burma, fled the country and received asylum in Canada in 2002.
Eight years later Ottawa still refuses to grant him permanent status, because he fought against his former country. The Toronto man has been left in a legal limbo, unable to become a full-fledged citizen, denied the right to travel abroad and worse, unable to sponsor his family to join him.
Lo Bo’s plight highlights what critics say will happen to many more legitimate refugees under the federal government’s bill aimed at cracking down on human smuggling.
The bill was unveiled last month by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney after 500 Tamil refugees came to Canada aboard the Sun Sea in August.
Under the proposed legislation, refugees could spend up to a year in detention while their refugee claim is being processed. They could also be subject to a five-year ban on leaving the country or sponsoring their families, even after their claim is approved.
The federal government argues Bill C-49 will make bogus refugee claimants think twice before coming here.
But advocates and refugee lawyers say the government already has the power to deny or delay a refugee’s permanent status, as seen in Lo Bo’s case. They argue the proposed law will further penalize refugees, including those being smuggled, rather than punish those doing the smuggling.
“People who are forced to flee for their lives need to be offered asylum and a warm welcome, not punished,” said Wanda Yamamoto of the Canadian Council for Refugees.
In a recent Star article, Toronto immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman, who represents the Tamil refugees, argued “designated claimants cannot apply for permanent residence for five years. This will impose immense hardship . . . ”
Lo Bo, 53, a Karen minority, and his family sought asylum in 1994 from the United Nations Refugee Agency in Thailand, where he worked for aid agencies and helped foreign reporters expose the plight of the Karen.
He was granted refugee status here in 2002, but only last December was he told his application for permanent status was “inadmissible.” Immigration officials stated they have not finalized his application because he “had engaged in or instigated the subversion by force of the government of Burma.”
He immediately appealed to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, and this week his lawyer, Paul Copeland, filed an application to the Federal Court of Canada to force Ottawa to make a decision.
“(Lo Bo’s) presence is not detrimental to Canada,” said Copeland. “There is no reason why it takes so long for the minister to make a decision.”
In 2008, Lo Bo’s wife and four children were resettled by the United States government, but without permanent status Lo Bo couldn’t travel.
His wife died in a car accident shortly after and Lo Bo could not attend her funeral. He also missed the wedding of his eldest son, Nerta, last year. And he can’t care for his two teenaged children, Nersoe and Maekaba, and two grandchildren.
“It feels like I’ve been in house arrest all these years, like in Burma,” said Lo Bo, now an interpreter, who finally spent a weekend with his kids in May in Thunder Bay, a six-hour drive from the children’s Minnesota home.