Countries Behaving Badly

Of all the bad timing in the world...

I have to renew my permanent residence card. My residence status isn't changing at all. I just need a card to prove my status when I cross the border using a commercial form of transportation. Renewing it requires filling out bazoodles of paperwork and then waiting a year and a day (well, 2/3 of a year), all of which is a blog topic for another day.

Because today I'm heartsick. Like Canadian officials, I've been ignoring Omar Khadr. Yesterday, the 24-year-old, who has spent 1/3 of his life locked up in Guantanamo and the other 2/3 growing up brainwashed by his family into becoming an American-hating future terrorist, entered a guilty plea in front of a U.S. military tribunal.

The "gold standard" evidence, crowed the U.S. military officials, was a confession that he threw a grenade that killed an American soldier and wounded others. The part that they didn't brag about was that they tortured him, a teenager, to get it.

It is believed--certainly by Khadr--that he will serve one year of his sentence at Guantanamo Bay, and "the rest of his sentence" in Canada.

Or, more properly, he will serve one MORE year at Guantanamo Bay. That's one MORE year, after some 8 years already. And the Harper government here is making no promises about taking him back after that.

In fact, CBC reports that more and more often, Canada is refusing to allow Canadians serving time in the U.S. to transfer to Canada, where they have access to rehabilitation and are closer to their families. Instead, Canadian officials leave them in the U.S., where they are denied access to rehabilitative services (because they're foreign nationals) and leave prison without any information about their offenses on their Canadian record. How exactly is this helping anyone? The offender gets no help and no support from family to re-enter the general population to live in a more constructive way. And Canadian officials don't know that s/he's just done time in the U.S.

Safety? Security? How does the treatment of Omar Khadr by either country, and the Harper government's so-called "tough on crime" attitude, help anyone? How many future terrorists were inflamed into action, not intimidated or prevented from action, by the way Omar Khadr has been treated?

So it is again time for me to choose to live in Canada. It is with a heavy heart that I collect documents and fill out paperwork proving that I am who I say I am.

I'm committed to my life in Canada. I am not ready to cut ties to the U.S., where I was born and where I also have family. But today, I am not particularly proud of the official actions of either country.

The only bright spot in all of this is that I have the ability to say so. At least for now.

(And oh by the way, here's hoping that the reason I am allowed to exercise this right to speak freely has everything to do with my citizenship and my immigration status, and nothing to do with the fact that I am a white, nominally Christian person.)