He’s been in Canada for 27 years. Now a former refugee faces deportation over trips back home

Well, if you have gone back repeatedly to your country of origin, hard to claim still being a refugee. Time should count less than behaviour:

…An obvious response is that permanent residence is not citizenship. Legally, that distinction matters. Permanent residence can be lost on statutory grounds that generally do not apply to Canadian citizenship.

Yet that does not make time irrelevant. One year of residence compared to 27 years of residence may be connected to the same immigration status, but they’re not socially or emotionally equivalent. Over decades, people become embedded in families, communities and workplaces in ways immigration categories alone cannot capture.

Slepcsik’s case is also striking because some of the conduct considered in the reavailment analysis involved family obligations. A journey undertaken to care for an injured sibling or attend a funeral can become part of the evidence considered under refugee law, while the person making that journey may understand it primarily as an obligation to someone they love.

Migration does not require people to stop caring about where they came from in order to become attached to somewhere new. People can sustain relationships and responsibilities across borders.

None of this means permanent residence should be treated as citizenship, or that the conditions attached to refugee protection should cease to matter with time. But when legal rules point one way and nearly 30 years of work, family and attachment point another, what weight should each carry?

Slepcsik’s case does not provide an easy answer. It asks something more basic: when immigration law decides whether someone may remain after decades of residence, how much should time count?

Source: He’s been in Canada for 27 years. Now a former refugee faces deportation over trips back home