Hoping to make it permanent

Sri Lankan refugees wait for word
By Dan Hilborn
Published Jan. 19, 2005


After creating a new life for themselves in Canada - complete with a daughter's marriage to a local church volunteer and the birth of a Canadian grandson - a small Burnaby family is living in fear that they will be forced to return to strife-torn Sri Lanka.

Janina Mendis-Ibarra says she and her mother, Lorna, are hoping to find a way that they can stay in Canada while they re-apply to become landed immigrants.

"This is causing a lot of grief for us," Janina said. "For my husband and I, it means we probably won't see each other for two years. And it will probably take five years to get my mother back into the country."

The small family, who originally applied to become refugees in Canada almost six years ago, has been caught in a whirlpool of changing international and personal conditions.

It was 11 years ago when Janina's father, Premarathne, made the decision to flee war-torn Sri Lanka and bring his wife and young daughter to Italy. Six years later, when they learned that they could never become full-fledged Italian citizens, Mendis made a decision to move again, this time to Canada, where he promptly applied for refugee status for himself, his wife and daughter.

But since arriving in Canada, there's been more than just the marriage of their only daughter and the birth of a grandson.

Two years ago, the Canadian government declared the Sri Lanka civil war between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority to be over. Several thousand refugee applicants from Sri Lanka were put on notice that their claims were no longer valid.

Then, just one month after the birth of his first grandchild, Premarathne, the father who made the original refugee application, passed away due to complications from renal cancer.

And then, this past Christmas, the entire world was left in shock when Sri Lanka became one of the countries hit the hardest by the devastating tidal waves that swept over Southeast Asia.

Last summer, Janina received the formal notice asking that she and her mother leave the country. "It has been determined that you would not be subject to risk of persecution, torture, risk to life or risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment if returned to your country of nationality or habitual residence," said the document signed by J. Mensink, pre-removal risk assessment officer with Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

"This has been a very long process already, but my dad was always the main applicant," said Janina, who since her father's untimely death has received a crash course in how the Canadian immigration process works. "Coming from Sri Lanka, my mother and I did not have any input to any of his decisions, because that's just the way things were."

The family does have a shaky reprieve. In the aftermath of the devastating tsunami, the Canadian government put a temporary suspension on all departure notices to Sri Lanka. But that suspension could be lifted at any time.

In addition, the federal immigration department has been rocked by turmoil for the past six months, and the appointment of a new minister last week adds another level of uncertainty to the family's plans.

"Quite frankly, I'm confused," Janina said. "It's taken us six years to get to this point, and we've already made a new life for ourselves. Now they're bringing people back to Canada from the disaster zone, but they want to send me and my mother back there."

Burnaby-Douglas MP Bill Siksay, the NDP immigration critic, said he sympathizes with the plight of any family that faces a forced separation at the hands of the government.

"I continue to be concerned about immigration policies that separate Canadian families," Siksay said. "And I would hope that Canadians have some expectation that spouses and children can remain here in Canada."

Siksay also said that Canadian refugee laws should be amended to reflect the fact that peoples' lives can change after they make their original application. "When it takes that long (six years for the Mendis' application), peoples' lives get complicated and decisions become less than favourable. This is another example of why we need a better system of processing refugee claims."