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©Gregory James, June 2006 World Refugee Day is June 20. This marks an opportunity to reflect on the courage shown by so many refugees who have had to flee their home countries. I have seen grown men cry when listening to stories told by genuine refugees. Their courage sometimes shows itself in defiance shown to brutal authorities. Other times it is found in the strength and bravery necessary to save one’s family. Sometimes it is in the risks taken by other people to rescue and save those in danger. Those of us who have grown up in Canada are often humbled by what we learn about the horrors faced by people in other parts of the world. No one should be naïve about the refugee process. It is subject to human weaknesses. Mistakes are made. Decision makers struggle to make decisions with very little information about the people they are judging. Genuine refugees struggle to understand such a foreign process and to express their stories clearly. Genuine refugees also struggle to prove their cases without access to crucial witnesses or documents. And of course there are others who have no fear at all, but are desperate for other reasons and so make up fake stories. In all of this mistakes are made. Genuine refugees are sometimes rejected, and fake claimants are sometimes accepted. Perfect decision making does not exist any more than perfect human beings exist. When we know that our decision makers will make errors, we have to decide what kind of errors we prefer. In criminal law we claim to have decided that we would rather see a guilty man go free than see an innocent man go to jail. For this reason judges and juries are told that when in doubt they should err on the side of finding a person not guilty. In refugee cases we have a similar choice: When in doubt, which side should refugee decision makers err on? Would we rather see a fake refugee accepted, or a genuine refugee refused?
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© Gregory James 2004-2007
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