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Lindsay Harding
The Muse

ST JOHNS, NFLD. (CUP)—On
January 25, The*Globe and Mail ran a
front-page story that reported on Canada’s
evolution into a more multicultural socie-
ty, a response to immigration trends over
the past 100 years.

“Canada adopted multiculturalism, and
the nature of what it meant to be a
Canadian was changed,” the story report-
ed, referring to changes made to Canadian
immigration laws. However, in the wake
of the September 11 tragedy, the federal
government has been under increasing
pressure to clamp down on the numbers
of immigrants and refugees allowed into
Canada.

“There’s always a story here,” says
Donna Geoffreys, director of the Refugee
Immigrant Advisory Council (RIAC), as
she sits at a desk littered with casework
folders.

The RIAC, located in St John’s, is a
group that helps refugees and immigrants
in their transition into Canadian society.
“We work here as volunteers,” said
Geoffreys. “It’s surprising what can hap-
pen, but we do it because the immigrants
and the refugees all say, “What would we
do if you weren't here?? What we do, and
this is what we focus on, is integrating
them into the community.”

As a part of their efforts, the volunteers
provide one-on-one English instruction
and home schooling for refugees whose
home countries have left them without
formal education. The RIAC also works
to help immigrants and refugee claimants
with their applications to enter and
remain within Canada, and they offer job
search assistance for those who need it as
well.

The RIAC is filled with reminders of the
people the staff dedicate their time to
helping. Gifts, mementos and newspaper
clippings cover the walls and bulletin
boards of the downtown office. They have
good endings and bad endings, as well as
some horror stories. One story with a
good ending is that of Alfred Koineh and
his wife Melrose Massaqoui.

A RIAC Sucess

Alfred and Melrose are originally from
Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa.
Throughout the 1990s, their country was
sent into turmoil by a series of coups and
a civil war made notorious by brutal
amputations and _ systematic sexual
assaults.

Alfred was a Red Cross worker in his
home country. In 1993, just before
Christmas, he disappeared—his wife and
family feared him dead. Years after losing
Alfred, Melrose was also separated from
her mother Marie Elizabeth, her brother
Leo, her sister Leygbey and her baby
daughter Nyange—her father and her sis-

http://otherpress.douglas.bc.ca

ter Patricia had already been killed.
Alfred’s parents and younger brother had
been burned alive by rebel soldiers, and
his remaining two brothers had been con-
scripted into the rebel army.

In 1999, Melrose, along with her two
sons, Nyakie and Tamba, and her niece
Daniella, were accepted into Canada as
refugees. Arriving in St John’s in
September 1999, Melrose enrolled the
children in MacDonald Drive Elementary
and MacDonald Drive Junior High. A
year later, they regained contact with her
mother, brother and daughter—thanks to
the help of an archbishop in Freetown, the
capital of Sierra Leone. Alfred and her sis-
ter were still missing.

Geoffreys, who had taken on Melrose’s

Refugees and Immigrants in Canada

‘Is Canada doing enough? Ask human rights activists

Canada, Alfred could not rejoin Melrose
and his sons immediately.

It took until January 18 of this year for
the family to reunite. The reunion includ-
ed Melrose’s mother, brother, adopted-sis-
ter Abie Gobmah, and the couple's daugh-
ter Nyange. Eight-year-old Nyange was
born after Alfred’s disappearance—this
was his first time meeting her. Melrose’s
sister, however, Leygbeh remains missing.
The Issues of Immigration
Nick Summers is a legal aid lawyer in St
John’s. He is also the national vice-presi-
dent of the Canadian Council for
Refugees (CCR), a national body com-
posed of smaller member organizations
such as RIAC. He says groups like RIAC

are essential to helping new Canadians

 

6

case, recalled how Alfred and his wife were
able to find each other.

“[Deen-turay], a Sierra Leonean woman,
had gone to London, England,” explained
Geoffreys. “She was at a newspaper stand
and saw something about immigration, so
she looked...at [Alfred Koineh’s] picture
and said, “He looks exactly like my son’s
best friend at MacDonald Drive Junior
High.’ She brought the paper back,
showed it to Melrose, and Melrose just
about fainted. She was so happy to find
out he was alive, after eight years.”

At the time Deen-turay made her visit
to England, Alfred, a social work graduate
of Oxford University, was working in
Oxford. He did not know what had hap-
pened to his family and feared they had
been killed. Having fled to England in
1994, he eventually won a six-year battle
to remain there as a refugee. The Oxford
Mail printed a feature on his case in their
July 14, 2001 issue.

After Melrose discovered he was alive,
Geoffreys tracked him down in England.
“When I phoned him in Oxford...he just
did not believe me,” Geoffreys explains. “I
said, “Your wife and children are safe here
in Canada.’ And he said, “This is impossi-
ble. Then [Melrose] said her pet name
that he called her and he said, ‘My wife!”
Due to legal difficulties in immigrating to

 

integrate themselves into Canadian socie-
ty.

“If [RIAC] weren't there, we'd just be
throwing the refugees into the deep end
and saying, ‘Sink or swim,” said
Summers. “Volunteer organizations like
RIAC. ..fill in some of the gaps.”

“Government-funded settlement agen-
cies are limited in what they can do,
whereas Donna [Geoffreys] and people
like her are not—they bring a human face
to things and a passion to things. When
its your job, that’s harder to do...where
else would [the reunion of Alfred and
Melrose] happen if it wasn’t for someone
like her there, willing to make the phone
calls?”

Geoffreys helped the Sierra Leonean
family in their fight to allow Alfred to
immigrate to Canada. She says immigra-
tion officials had difficulty understanding
the couple's legal marriage status. They
had not consecrated their marriage with a
wedding, but under Sierra Leonean law, a
couple are considered married as soon as
they become engaged.

It took special permission,
Minister of Citizenship and Immigration
Canada (CIC) Denis Coderre, for Alfred
to be allowed to join his family in St
John’s. Alfred is now working on a
Masters in Social Work at Memorial

from

Mach 5, 2003

University, and Melrose is also enrolled in
the university's School of Social Work.
They plan to have a church wedding this
August.

The red tape that delayed Alfred’s
reunion with his family is just one exam-
ple of the type of bureaucratic roadblocks
placed in the way of hopeful immigrants
and refugees in Canada. Groups like CCR
are disturbed by such trends in Canadian
immigration legislation.

The CCR lobbies federal policymakers
on behalf of their member groups, bring-
ing the concerns of refugees and immi-
grants to government, especially concern-
ing changes to refugee and immigration
legislation.

In St John’s, Summers is one of two
lawyers specializing in refugee and immi-
gration law within the legal aid system.
Through his practice and his work lobby-
ing on behalf of the CCR, he is familiar
with Canadian immigration and refugee
law.

Following the September 11 attacks, the
US began cracking down on its borders in
an attempt to improve national security
and protect itself from further terrorism.
New American border-crossing regula-
tions have led to the questionable deten-
tion and deportation of Canadians based
on their country of origin.

Public outcries within Canada followed
swiftly, with federal officials calling for an
end to what have been called instances of
racial profiling. Some Canadians, includ-
ing novelist Rohinton Mistry and Heather
Mallick, a columnist for The Globe and
Mail, have boycotted travel to the US in
protest of the controversial policy.

However, human rights advocates like
Geoffreys and Summers question
Canadians’ right to claim the moral high
ground.

“T don’t think we can sort of say, ‘Hmm,
look at those Americans.’ I think we'd bet-
ter look at our own backyard,” said
Geoffreys.

Over the past year and a half, pressures
have been mounting to create new laws in
line with security measures passed by our
neighbours to the south. In Canada and
the US, critics have disparaged what they
call Canada’s lax border controls. The
results—in addition to the implementa-
tion of controversial new “anti-terrorism”
laws—have been security-focused changes
to Canadian refugee and immigration leg-
islation, which were passed in the summer
of 2002.

Summers and the CCR were involved
in the policy-drafting process that resulted
in the updated standards. He says they
made many compromises throughout the
development of the legislation in the
hopes of achieving one of their most

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