| Shukrije Berkolli, a Kosovar refugee with five children, says her family is considering returning to her devastated, ethnically divided home country because the Canadian government won’t allow her husband and the father of her children to immigrate to Canada.
Sitting in her sparsely furnished subsidized housing unit in southwest Calgary, Berkoli immediately starts to cry when she talks about her family’s attempts to bring her husband, Xhevdet, to Canada. He was refused once for refugee status in 2000 because he was charged with a minor offence in Germany, and earlier this year, Shukrije tried to sponsor Xhevdet to come to Canada but was told she couldn’t because she’s living on social assistance.
Her five children start crying when they describe what it’s been like not to have their father around for years.
"Without my dad I just miss everything," says 18-year-old Valbona. "I miss his smile. I love my dad the most. Every time I talk to him on the phone he cries."
Ten-year-old Adelina has only lived with her dad for two years out of her entire life.
"I’m sad," she says. She describes how she recently made him a Christmas present but she won’t be able to give it to him in person.
Shukrije has recently been diagnosed with clinical depression and can’t work. She says she feels like she’s lost her ability to cope.
"I can’t do this anymore," she says.
The family’s two oldest daughers, Arbnora, 20, and Valbona, 18, are both working full-time at low-paying jobs in order to help support the family although they would both like to further their education.
Shukrije says if her husband were with the family, he would be working, the family wouldn’t have to be on social assistance and her two oldest daughters could go back to school.
Her husband has now suggested that the family should move back to Kosovo so they can all be together, says Shukrije. However, the family home was destroyed in the war and jobs are very difficult to find.
The family has been separated for eight of the last 10 years, after Xhevdet was forced to escape to Germany in 1992. He felt his life was in danger because, as an ethnic Albanian police officer, he was starting to get harassed by his Serb neighbours. Xhevdet tried twice to sponsor his family to come to Germany but he was told that he didn’t make enough money to sponsor the entire family.
The family expected to be reunited in Canada after Shukrije and her five children were accepted as refugees. However, the minor criminal charge Xhevdet received in Germany for collecting two months of social assistance while working ended the chance of a family reunion.
A Canada Citizenship and Immigration official equated the charge to an indictable offence under the Criminal Code of Canada punishable by up to 10 years in prison, which means Xhevdet is inadmissible to Canada.
Dennis Caul, a Calgary immigration advisor who has been assisting the family, says equating the charge to an indictable offence was "overzealousness" on the part of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Caul says the charge should have been equated to a summary offence, in which case Xhevdet would not be barred from Canada.
The family was again disappointed this year after Shukrije’s application to sponsor her husband was refused.
"Citizenship and Immigration Canada says they’re trying to successfully integrate newcomers into the community. That’s not what they’re doing here. I see alienation, sadness. I see two young woman working low-paying jobs rather than going to school," says Caul.
Rob Ferguson, director of Calgary’s Citizenship and Immigration Canada division, says "family reunification is a priority but it must be done according to law."
"The legislation is very clear. A person convicted of a criminal offence that equates to an indictable offence is deemed inadmissible," says Ferguson. Ferguson says anyone who is deemed criminally inadmissible can make an appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
"If the board were to find humanitarian and compassionate grounds we would find a way to bring the person here," says Ferguson.
Caul says the family won’t be able to afford an immigration lawyer to represent them at the hearing and this will put them at a disadvantage. However, Valbona says the family won’t give up until they’re all together again no matter how much money and time it takes.
"The family’s broken up. I don’t call this life," she says. |
Copyright ©2003 FFWD. All rights reserved.