Asylum seekers want rules changed

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/03/2018 (2767 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two asylum seekers who were injured while crossing the border from the U.S. into Manitoba in frigid temperatures are calling on Canada to scrap the Safe Third Country Agreement.

Razak Iyal and Seidu Mohammed lost their fingers to frostbite after walking over the border in December 2016 to make a refugee claim, following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Because of the Safe Third Country Agreement that took effect in 2004, the two Ghanaian men couldn’t present themselves at a port of entry to ask Canada for refugee protection. They had to avoid the official border crossing in order to make a legitimate refugee claim from inside Canada. In the case of Iyal and Mohammed, who ended up walking much further into Canada than they had to — past Emerson to Letellier — they nearly died.

Tonight at an event in Winnipeg, they will speak about their reported mistreatment as asylum-seekers in the United States, and their perilous journey to find safety in Canada. The event (7:30 p.m. at the Rainbow Resource Centre, 170 Scott St.) is sponsored by Amnesty International, with former refugees from Syria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Burundi, Eritrea, and Afghanistan also sharing their stories.

Those in attendance will have the option of signing petitions asking federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen to rescind the Safe Third Country Agreement.

Iyal and Mohammed spent weeks in hospital, and months recovering, before they appeared before Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada adjudicators to plead their cases. Both were granted refugee protection in 2017.