Algerians sent back - minus baby

[The following is an excellent article looking at the cases of Mourad Bourouisa, 37, Yakout Seddiki, 36, and Ahmed, 2, three of the approximately one-thousand non-status Algerians residing in Canada facing deportation to Algeria in the coming days, weeks and months. The Action Committee for Non-Status Algerians (le Comite d'action des sans-statut) has initiated a "Stop the Deportations" campaign for a collective solution to the plight of non-status persons facing imminent expulsion. More info about how to get involved in the "Stop the Deportations" campaign is included below after the article. Campaign endorsements are still very welcome. Ally-work with the Action Committee is part of the efforts of the "No One is Illegal" campaign in Montreal.]

Algerians sent back - minus baby
SUE MONTGOMERY
The Montreal Gazette
Thursday, October 03, 2002

Mourad Bourouisa and Yakout Seddiki have been ordered to pack up their lives, board a plane at Dorval and return to their native Algeria. Their son, Canadian-born Ahmed, is allowed to stay. The problem is, he's just 2.

That's just one of many absurd details in the case of a couple who met and married here after fleeing the north African country, where killings, imprisonment and disappearances have been the norm for 10 years.

Just 10 days after they received the summons to appear at 11 a.m. Oct. 20 at Dorval, Bourouisa received a work permit from Immigration Canada, valid for one year till next September.

The irony is that he has applied for, and been denied, such a permit five times since 1999.

And in what seems like a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, Immigration Quebec has asked the couple to go to New York on Nov. 5 for an interview.

They can't enter the U.S. because, thanks to the war against terrorism, it's unlikely they'd get a visa (they already were refused once) – and Immigration Canada has seized their passports.

To add insult to injury, they have paid thousands of dollars to lawyers who've either been incompetent or haven't turned up for their hearings.

As they sat in their one-bedroom St. LE9onard apartment yesterday, they surveyed the few things they own that they will sell before leaving Canada: a love seat, a tiny television set and a few children's toys.

"The immigration agent said, 'You can leave your son here, but you have to go back,' and when I asked him if he'd look after my child, he said no, said Bourouisa, 37, who was an accountant in Algeria before fleeing in
1995.

His wife, 36, who was director of a daycare in Algeria, is expecting their second child in April, and says the stress is interfering with her pregnancy.

"I can't eat, I can't sleep," Seddiki said. "Why are they doing this to us? Why won't they give us this chance to live here?"

Her doctor at the Royal Victoria Hospital, David Morris, confirmed that stress threatens the pregnancy. He said his patient cried for an hour in his office.

"This is a totally inhumane way of dealing with a complex emotional and political issue," he said in an interview. "This is obvious profiling, but they are profiling the wrong people."

The couple are just two of an estimated 1,000 Algerians in Canada, mostly in Montreal, who now face deportation. They had been spared until April 5, when Immigration Minister Denis Coderre lifted a moratorium on deportations, saying Algerians were no longer at risk.

Since then, Robert Gervais of Immigration Canada said, 21 have been sent back.

Why then, just four days before Coderre's decision came down, did Canada's own Department of Foreign Affairs warn all Canadians to stay out of Algeria? The country's not the best place to visit, what with over 100,000 Algerians having had their throats slit or gunshots to the head since January 1992. That's when the government canceled elections to prevent the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front from taking office.

The Foreign Affairs travel advisory also tells investors the "bottom line is that Algeria is a country of commercial opportunity that is trying to emerge from the violence of the past decade and rebuild its society."

Coderre's announcement also came on the heels of Prime Minister Jean Chretien's visit to Algeria and other African countries in preparation for last June's G8 summit. His African development plan, New Partnership for Africa's Development, was high on the agenda.

Canada could just be helping the big petroleum producer emerge, and lifting the moratorium sends a message that things are hunky-dory and foreign investors should come on down!

Coincidentally, in May, SNC-Lavalin International Inc. announced it was awarded a $141-million contract by the Algerian Department of Water Resources to build a water-supply transfer system, which will divert drinking water from five area dams to Algiers. Work began on the project on April 1, 2002.

In reality, things don't seem that calm. An Amnesty International document says about 100 unarmed civilians have been killed in demonstrations in Algeria since April 2001.

About 4,000 people have "disappeared" after being arrested by members of the security forces or state-armed militias since 1993, yet no action has been taken to clarify their fate.

Whatever is behind the decision to deport Algerians, Franeois Crepeau, a law professor at the Universite de Montreal and the lead author of a 2000 study of the Immigration and Refugee Board, thinks there has to be a better way.

In his view, if people have lived here for five years, they should be allowed to stay.

"Five years is a quarter of family life with children, it's a sixth of your working life and it's a long time in a person's life," he said in an interview.

He sees no reason why Canada, which prides itself on being a promoter of human rights and especially of children's rights, couldn't adopt a policy like the one in France.

There, foreign parents of French children are not allowed to be expelled, unless they are found to be terrorists.

Meanwhile, little Ahmed, who jabbers nonstop in French and Arabic, is oblivious to the pride on his parents' faces when they show off his Canadian passport.