To the editor:
Re: "Deportees remain in church sanctuary," June 8.
No veteran of the Soviet secret police is admissible to Canada. That is Canadian law. As he eventually admitted, Mikhail Lennikov was a captain in the notorious KGB. It is immaterial what role he played in the Communist political police. No KGB man is admissible to Canada.
His subsequent attempt to claim that he was a refugee was dismissed by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, a competent tribunal. When his appeal of the IRB's deportation order was upheld he decamped to a pre-prepared "sanctuary" in a Lutheran church, obviously having no intention of accepting the decision of a federal court judge. That he remains in Canada, three years later, is unacceptable, as is the ongoing lack of action on the part of the Canada Border Services Agency. There is no "right of sanctuary" in Canada.
The CBSA should do its job and immediately remove him to the Russian Federation. And the Canada Revenue Agency should, simultaneously, revoke the charitable status of any church that engages in the practice of giving "sanctuary" to bogus refugee claimants and other illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country. We should all accept the rule of law in Canada.
L. Y. Luciuk, Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association
Ottawa
