Latest update April 3rd, 2025 7:45 PM
800 Guyanese to be deported from Canada
Canada
By Tusika Martin
Some 800 Guyanese are awaiting deportation from Canada, High Commissioner Charles Court said yesterday.
The Canadian High Commissioner said that during his two years thus far as High Commissioner to Guyana, about 160 Guyanese have been deported.
According to him, less than five percent of those deportees have criminal code convictions in Canada.
He noted that while the waiting list of Guyanese to be deported is about 700 to 800, it is in the same league of persons pending deportation to Mexico, Iran and other countries that have larger populations than Guyana.
“So it is an important issue in our bi-lateral relationship. I think we can manage that. The High Commission through the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives has helped to set up an NGO with the aim of helping reintegrate deportees.”
That organization in Guyana, he added, has been up and running for about 18 months now.
“The last time we checked they had about 60 persons who went to them. They are now looking at working at some other organizations to make the best use of already existing facilities to help returnees.”
In a strong tone, the High Commissioner pointed out that the ‘bottom line’ remains that once Guyanese living abroad or citizens of any other country violate the law and serve their sentences, it is up to their countries to accept them back into society.
“That is the legal fact of the matter. It is a difficult issue but we all have our responsibilities in it and we will certainly live up to ours,” Court said.
During a press conference last week, President Bharrat Jagdeo had reiterated that the problem of deportees was a challenge.
He was at the time lauding the Customs Anti Narcotics Unit for its successful collaboration with international agencies in the recent drug bust in the United States and Canada.
The Head of State also pointed to the double standards of developed countries as these relate to the drug fight across the world. He called such double standards counter productive.
“They lecture us on drugs and want us to fight drug trafficking more but when you look at the list of people that get sent back, often it is a long list of drug traffickers.”
According to a report by the United Nations High Commission on refugees, the issue of criminal deportees has been a source of tension between the United States and Guyana. Guyana’s refusal to accept criminal deportees had even led the United States to ban the issuance of visas to Guyanese government officials and their families in late 2001.
That ban was lifted once Guyana agreed to accept 100 deportees in 2004.
In 2003, the United States deported 379 Guyanese and of these individuals, 38 were refused entry at the border; and 135 had been convicted for drug-related and other serious offences.
President Jagdeo has always expressed concerns about the return of criminal deportees, many of whom the police believe have introduced new levels of violence in the commission of crimes such as kidnapping, which has seen an alarming increase in recent years.
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