Laibar Singh’s case is a complicated one. Singh is the 48-year-old Indian father of four who is dodging his deportation order by seeking sanctuary in the Abbotsford Sikh temple.

He entered the country on a fake passport. Once he landed on Canadian soil, he quickly admitted the document was phony and initiated a refugee claim.

It took four years for his claim to wend its way through the system until it was finally rejected. In the meantime — and this is where it gets complicated — Singh suffered a debilitating aneurysm that left him paralyzed. He has spent most of the last year living 24/7 in hospital.

Entering this country on a false passport is illegal. The authorities can send you to jail for it, but they don’t do that too often. Many people who make refugee claims come here with fake documents. What else can they do? They are refugees because they’re being persecuted at home. The governments that persecute them aren’t also likely to offer them the proper documentation they will need to escape the state’s clutches.

This attitude on the part of the Immigration and Refugee Board reflects an aspect of our country of which we should all be very proud.

Ours is the most generous country in the world to refugees. Fifty per cent of all the people who arrive claiming refugee status are allowed to stay. Compare that to the other western countries, with an average acceptance rate of 14 per cent.

The board spent four years assessing and reassessing Singh’s claim. It allowed him time to appeal the original decision. It let him seek a judicial review by the federal court. It also granted him time to seek an exemption on humanitarian grounds. He was rejected at every step. They just didn’t believe his claim that he would suffer persecution if he went home.

Now he’s making his final play based on his physical condition. He is seeking the immigration minister’s personal intervention to cancel the deportation order on compassionate grounds.

If sending Singh home amounted to a death sentence, this would be a much more difficult decision for the minister. But that’s not the case.

Supporters say Singh is doing just fine while he camps out in the priest’s home behind the temple. Clearly his medical needs aren’t that complex.

India has a good health-care system — so good, in fact, that it is a destination for Canadian patients hunting for quality care without long wait lists or hefty price tags.

If Singh goes home, he won’t find himself in a country so poor and backward that his needs can’t be met.

So if he wants to stay, he’ll have to do more than argue that his physical condition makes it impossible to leave.

He’ll have to convince the minister that, despite its generous record in accepting refugees, the board was wrong in his case.

After four years of investigations, hearings and rejections, it will be interesting to see if he has a real case to make.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 1:01 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.