Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - April 2007
The spotlight has been placed again on the need for a protocol for dealing with immigration issues in Toronto schools following an incident whereby an immigration officers sought for a seventeen-year-old student of non-status parents at her school, placing the student in a state of fearful limbo.
Similar incidents that took place nearly a year ago prompted Toronto School Board trustees to vote unanimously to create a protocol for dealing with immigration issues in the schools. While the protocol is to be completed this fall by staff members, trustee Chris Bolton said that little has been done since the concept was voted for a year ago, and that “people on the front lines still don't seem to know the rule."
The new incident has prompted advocates to put a new push on schools to react, and to put in place a "don't ask, don't tell" policy into practice. This week marks the beginning of a new campaign, dubbed “"Education, Not Deportation", launched by a coalition of teachers, students and activists who believe non-status minors have the right to an education without being hassled to reveal their immigration status and risk deportation.
The Board, committed to the notion that every child has a right to be educated regardless of their immigration status, informed all schools last fall of their obligation to admit non-status students and not to provide student information to immigration enforcement officials without the guardian's consent. The Board still maintains that staff must co-operate with immigration enforcement officials.
The development of a protocol remains a complex procedure because specific guidelines are required to enable schools to get the information they need without asking for people's immigration documents. This would include the development of a new registration form, ways to obtain and verify a student's date of arrival to Canada to qualify for government ESL funding, and ways to prevent foreign visa students from abusing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy to dodge international tuition fees.
A Canada Border Services spokesperson stated that non-status children are not required to provide valid student authorization to attend elementary and secondary schools in Canada. Enforcement officers only go into schools for investigation and arrest with a senior official's permission and under exceptional circumstances, usually at the request of a guardian already in detention or for national security and criminal reasons.
Source:
http://www.thestar.com/Unassigned/article/201941
