NANAIMO: A family living in Canada for 11 years has been ordered to leave the country because of a missing medical report required by Immigration Canada to prove the family is healthy and would not be a burden on the health system.
Darshan and Kuldip Penjetta have been given the choice of either taking their Canadian-born daughter nine-year-old Harinder to the Punjab with them or putting her in foster care in Canada.
“For a nine-year-old Canadian girl to go back to India to live in the most primitive conditions in the Punjab which is quite a violent place is quite unconscionable” said Chris Considine the Penjettas’ lawyer who is scrambling to have the deportation order halted.
Considine said the doctor who prepared the medical report has provided correspondence to confirm that the report was forwarded to the immigration department.
“We have sent a copy of the correspondence to the immigration minister’s office and should receive something from them soon” he said.
Harinder who speaks English and French and has received glowing reports from her French immersion school in this Vancouver Island city speaks almost no Punjabi
“To plunk her down in the middle of the Punjab would be tragic and inhuman” said Considine
The family came to Canada as refugees in 1981.
The Penjettas probably have to accept some responsibility for their problems as they did not realize they had to chase down the missing medical documents and have them re-submitted Considine said.
Maurcen Shakespeare Nanaimo Immigration Center manager said a medical report is one of the most important documents in an application.
A ministerial order is probably the only way the deportation can now be stopped Shakespeare said.
She said the family is booked to leave Nanaimo for Vancouver by plane soon.
Nanaimo-Cowichan MP Dave Stupich has appealed to Immigration Minister Bernard Valcourt to stop the deportation.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 31, 1992
