Shafia trial jurors find family guilty of 1st-degree murder

[iverglas]

33. removal from Canada

There would have to be a removal hearing, of course. It may well proceed in the near future, since the conviction makes them inadmissible and vitiates their permanent residence status, other considerations aside. The order would be executed when they were eligible for release.

The inadmissibility has to be proved (not difficult), any refugee protection claim disposed of, and the pre-removal risk assessment (risk if returned) completed -- that being the latest and current form of the process. By the time the issue arises, circumstances will have changed in countless ways.

http://www.cbc.ca/m/rich/news/story/2012/01/29/shafia-sunday.html

The Shafias moved to Canada in 2007. They fled their native Afghanistan more than 15 years earlier and had lived in Dubai and Australia before moving the family to Montreal and applied for citizenship.

Presumably they came here as economic migrants (presumably having had legal residence in at least one other country besides Canada), and not refugee protection claimants.

You may recall that I'd been unable to figure out how someone brought two wives to Canada:

At the time of the deaths, they were all permanent residents, except for Amir who had only a visitor's visa. They told authorities, and initially maintained after the deaths, that Amir was Mohammad Shafia’s cousin.

... Rona Amir was Shafia’s first wife. The couple wed in an arranged marriage in Kabul before civil war broke out in their homeland. Amir wasn’t able to conceive and encouraged Shafia to take another wife, which he did in 1989, marrying Tooba Yahya in another arranged marriage.

So first wife Rona Amir, one of the victims, was in a specially precarious position: in Canada without permanent status, leaving her at the mercy of the family. (The second marriage was wholly invalid for Canadian immigration purposes.) We might assume she'd been in that position for a long time.

Immigration authorities fell down on the job on that one -- she'd been in Canada how long as a "visitor", and how? -- along with child welfare authorities failing the youngest daughter.

I'd just mention that I've had the opposite experience. A client of mine turned out to be a very weird and abusive man (he got caught cashing his deceased mother's pension cheques, and I was concerned about the welfare of his two elderly aunts in his household). He brought me a young woman he and his Filipina wife claimed was her sister, who was in Canada as a family care worker but in violation of the terms of her visa. The whole situation just smelled so bad, and I was so concerned about the young woman, that I arranged for her to meet privately with RCMP (not an easy feat in the circumstances). They offered her protection to leave the household, and she would have had sympathetic treatment from immigration. Unfortunately, she didn't follow through.

But women like Rona Amir and her stepdaughters ... there is help available, but not enough and not easily accessible. Work is being done to help victims of forced marriages in Canada, for example. The job of getting those resources to the people who need them, and letting those people know what help they can get, is a very important one and it isn't yet being done adequately.