Asylum seekers are not criminals and B.C. is flouting inter-national law by treating them as such, according to a report pre-pared for the United Nations' refugee agency.
Detained refugees in the Vancouver area are more likely than their counterparts in Toronto or Montreal to be held in a provincial jail or pretrial facility rather than an immigration holding centre.
This means asylum seekers are held alongside prisoners and are subject to all the same restrictions - even though they are not criminals - and have limited access to legal counsel, argued the report, entitled The Human and Financial Cost of Asylum Seekers in Canada and released last month. It was written by Delphine Nakache, a University of Ottawa international development professor.
Canada Border Services Agency officers have the discretionary authority to detain refugee claimants when the officer has reasonable grounds to believe the person poses a danger to public safety, is a flight risk, or when the person's identity has not been adequately proven.
International law stipulates that, except for short periods, detained migrants should be held in specifically designed centres tailored to their legal status and set up to provide for their needs, including access to legal counsel. They should not be held in prisons, the report says.
The CBSA's immigration holding centres in Toronto and Laval, Que., have a capacity of 125 and 150 beds, respectively, according to the report. The B.C. Immigration holding centre at the Vancouver airport has a capacity of 24 beds, but detainees are only held there for 72 hours. After that, they are transferred to maximum-security provincial jails, mostly in the Fraser Valley.
"Asylum seekers in British Columbia and many other parts of Canada are held under circumstances inappropriate to their non-criminal status," the report said. It added that holding asylum seekers in maximum-security rather than medium-security prisons is an unnecessarily restrictive use of resources given the low security risk that asylum seekers present.
The Canada Border Services Agency declined an interview, but said in an emailed statement that the agency "makes every possible effort to avoid situations of co-mingling of civil and criminal detainees."
The number of refugees detained in Canada rose steadily after 2004, peaking at 5,961 in 2008-09 before dropping to 4,125 the following year. Average detention time, however, increased to 24 days in 2009-10 from 17 days the previous year and was even longer for refugees held outside CBSA facilities, which is overwhelmingly the case in B.C.
Just over 36 per cent of refugees detained in provincial or municipal prisons were held for 40 days or longer compared with 12.6 per cent of those held in CBSA facilities.
The CBSA statement said that at present in B.C., 13 people who are awaiting decisions on their refugee claims are being detained under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
Eight are detained for being a flight risk; five are being held on identity grounds. None are detained due to security concerns.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/treatment+asylum+seekers+unlawful+report/5956203/story.html#ixzz1ijAjLddm
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