Burnaby Now: Roma rally participant pleased; Refugees concerned with new immigration rules

A group of Roma-Hungarian refugee families descended on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada office in Vancouver last Tuesday for a rally and managed to have their case heard by one insider.

“We had roughly around 40 people,” said Florian Botos, a Burnaby resident and Roma-Hungarian who’s lived in Canada for years. “We came out as families, small kids were there.”

The rally was mostly Roma-Hungarian families from Burnaby, New Westminster and Coquitlam, but ACORN, a community activist group, helped them organize the protest.

The group was expressing concerns on the treatment of Roma refugee claimants in Canada and attempting to debunk stereotypes of their people as bogus claimants who come here to abuse the welfare system.

There are also concerns about recent changes to immigration law about to come in effect, and that Hungary will be put on a list of safe countries that don’t normally produce refugees.

Refugee claimants on this list will have their cases heard more quickly with no right to appeal if rejected.

Prior to the rally, Botos told the NOW that the lives of Roma people in Hungary are in “great danger,” and that they face widespread discrimination and attacks from neo-Nazi groups, some of which have resulted in death.

At the rally, a few people went inside the building to deliver a letter to the Immigration Refugee Board, asking for a meeting with some high-ranking official. They met with Melissa Anderson, a spokesperson for the board, and Botos was very happy with the outcome.

“I didn’t expect that much, but I think it was huge step for us, because we get the immigration board – how can I say, leader or boss there. She did sit down with us, and we had a conversation for roughly an hour or 40 minutes about the situation, and she was very helpful,” Botos said. “I was very surprised. I didn’t expect (that). Roma people in Hungary don’t really have a chance to do things like that.”

However, Anderson told the NOW that the Immigration Refugee Board is an independent tribunal, much like a court, and is not involved in the recent changes to immigration law, nor in the list of countries considered safe.

The federal immigration minister will be compiling the list, likely this fall.

Anderson accepted the letter and sent it on to the executive director of the Immigration and Refugee Board, but she explained that it would be inappropriate to advise the group or other immigration branches of government on what to do.

“It would be completely inappropriate, we’re like a court,” she said.

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