Navaneelan说,周五的消息标志着“一个非常圆满的结局是什么有很长,有时,极其痛苦的旅程为我的客户。”
Ottawa’s change of heart keeps gay couple together
Two women came here for refuge and found each other. Immigration said their landing papers will come in weeks, but Ottawa wanted one of them out now.
By: Nicholas Keung Immigration reporter, Published on Fri Jan 10 2014
Canada Border Services Agency abruptly changed its mind Friday and deferred the deportation of a woman who is weeks away from getting permanent resident papers.
Border officials broke the news to Xiaoyi Ge’s lawyer late in the day, less than 24 hours after the Star inquired about her scheduled Jan. 17 removal.
Ge had been told by Citizenship and Immigration Canada that the failed refugee claimant and her wife, Trudi Stewart, should have their permanent residency granted within eight to 10 weeks.
“We are all relieved that CBSA has suddenly changed its mind,” said the couple’s lawyer, Anthony Navaneelan. “Ms Ge and her wife should never have been put through this heartache.”
Both sexual violence survivors, Stewart and Ge were born worlds apart, but found refuge — and each other — in Toronto.
“I don’t want my wife to go back to China. I don’t want to lose her,” a teary Stewart, a native of Kingston, Jamaica, said in an interview before learning of the border officials’ change of heart. “She is a great deal of my life. She is my only family.”
Ge’s pending permanent residence application with Stewart would have been voided if she left Canada.
In an email to the Star, CBSA spokesperson Anna Pape explained the agency had been aware of the permanent residence application but a stay wasn't “immediately available to her” because it had not yet been approved at Ge's last pre-removal interview, Dec. 10. “The CBSA has now learned that Ms Gee has been approved (as of Jan. 7) … therefore her removal has been deferred.”
Had Ge been forced to leave Stewart could have reapplied to bring her back — a process that takes roughly nine months for spouses — but Ge must first obtain an “authorization to return to Canada” from Immigration Minister Chris Alexander. Her record as a failed refugee would have worked against it.
“These are two people who came here from the opposite ends of the world, had horrible lives, suffered hardships and survived sexual violence. They travelled half around the world to get protection in Canada,” Navaneelan said.
Stewart, 26, fled to Canada from Jamaica in December 2010. She says she had been raped by thugs at gunpoint in Montego Bay, because of her sexual orientation.
“I tried to run away but I fell, and the two men began beating me. I begged for my life, as they slapped me in the face several times with a knife,” recalled Stewart, who was the subject of a National Film Board of Canada documentary, Last Chance.
Ge, 38, alleges she was raped by her employer in China. She arrived in Canada in August 2010 — after, she says, she began getting anonymous calls expressing disgust at her relationship with a British English teacher and threatening to do her harm. One day, she was assaulted in the hallway of her building.
“I didn’t go to police because I was afraid to disclose my sexual orientation,” said Ge, whom Stewart has nicknamed “Backbone” for her “skinniness” and for being her emotional support. (Ge, in return, jokingly calls Stewart “Meatball,” for her “love for meat and being chubby.”
Although the Immigration and Refugee Board didn’t dispute that Ge was a lesbian, the judge denied her asylum on the grounds that mistreatment of homosexuals in China amounts to serious discrimination only, not persecution.
Stewart, a retail clerk, and Ge, a bank teller, met through a support group for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) refugee claimants at the 519 Church Street Community Centre, at a Christmas party in 2010.
“It was love at first sight. Our eyes met. We started chatting and she asked me to teach her how to dance,” said Stewart. The couple immediately bonded because of their similar experiences of hardship and survival. They married a year ago.
The news of Ge’s scheduled deportation sent both back into the kind of depression they once experienced in their homelands. Psychometric tests done in support of Ge’s request for deferred removal showed she was suffering severe anxiety and depression.
“I am scared to go back to China. My family and friends would push me to date men again,” Ge told the Star earlier. “I can’t tell anyone I am married and in love with a girl.”
Navaneelan said Friday’s news marks “a very happy ending to what has a long and, at times, extremely painful journey for both of my clients.”
..作者: canadafreeword 时间: 2014-1-12 20:29
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