Limits to be Put on Churches Offering Sanctuary - Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Gankhuyag Bumuutseren has been living at St. James Anglican Church in Toronto since August 2009.   He moved in after the Canadian Border Security Agency declined his request to remain in Canada and ordered him deported to his native China.  He claims that his life will be in danger if he were to return to China.  He says that he was recruited by Chinese intelligent services to spy on expatriate dissidents in North America and then worked for the Mongolians as a double agent.  He spends his day in the church painting and minding his three year old Canadian-born daughter while his wife works at Costco. 

Bamuutseren is one of three declined refugee claimants who are currently living in Canadian churches, having sought sanctuary from immigration officials. For centuries church buildings have been places of refuge for such asylum seekers.  The tradition of sanctuary goes back to the middle ages, when church law and civil law worked in tandem. Civil law at the time didn’t offer legal safeguards for asylum seekers, so churches stepped in to do so.

Throughout Canadian history, no immigration official has stepped inside a church building to arrest someone taking refuge there.  The thinking has been that asylum seekers eventually will have to leave the premises, and when they have arrests have been made.  In some situations, the immigration officials have eventually granted residential status on humanitarian grounds.

It appears as this all may be coming to an end.  According to a report in the National Post, the Canadian Border Agency has determined that church sanctuary cases can “pose a threat to the integrity of the immigration system.”  So they have developed a formal policy, laying out examples of cases where it may be necessary to violate the tradition of sanctuary.

There is nothing in Canadian law that prevents authorities from entering church buildings to arrest asylum seekers.  In the past decisions have been made on a case by case basis.  According to the new policy, which was added to the CBSA’s enforcement manual on March 29, the case by case approach will continue.  However, for the first time ever, it gives examples of “exceptional circumstances” when entering a church might be necessary.  This would include "cases where there are strong public calls for enforcement action" or where there's a risk to public safety or national security, such as cases involving terrorists or murderers.

While the CBSA admits that there have been no such cases in the past, they are carefully monitoring the situation.  It appears that agency personnel are increasingly wary of the whole tradition of churches offering sanctuary.  Once document acquired by Canwest News Service says this “"Many places of worship that provide sanctuary insist that they only do so for failed refugee claimants who are not security threats, violators of human or international rights, associated with organized crime or serious criminals. Current and past sanctuary cases are generally consistent with these claims.  Nevertheless, CBSA continues to be wary of giving the benefit of the doubt to screening processes used by places of worship." 

Documents goes on to say that while sanctuary cases are rare they "pose a threat to the integrity of the immigration system" and "invite negative media attention.”

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