Thank you very much for inviting me here today.
I am a lawyer and I practise exclusively in immigration law. I'm also certified by the law society as a specialist in citizenship and immigration law.
In my practice I have quite a few clients who come from women's shelters and from legal clinics, such as the Barbra Schlifer clinic, that help abused women. I wanted to offer some advice and share some of the experiences that I've had with clients who have been abused through the spousal sponsorship system.
It is very unfortunate that when a lot of these women come to me I am helpless, based on the current immigration system, to offer them many choices other than to stay with the abuser. First of all, before they can get permanent residence there is a dilemma within the spousal sponsorship system itself, because the spousal sponsorship system is dependent on the family being together. If the woman leaves the husband, then they lose their ability to get permanent residence.
What that means is that it results in situations where the abuser has tremendous power, which is magnified by this system. This stretches throughout language ability, education, money. Women who are in spousal sponsorship situations will have that vulnerability where they're easily exploited by their abusers in these kinds of situations.
The abuser, I've seen, will often refuse to even file the papers or will threaten to withdraw. Even when they get permanent residence, they will threaten to tell immigration, send poison pen letters, and they often do. Even though the women are in genuine relationships with them, they have children with them, they are abused and they want to leave. This is the power that the abuser has over them.
What happens to the women and what happens to the children who are in these situations? Well, the women will often lose status. Their status will become precarious. They're put into detentions sometimes. The children are put into detentions sometimes or the children can be separated from them and put into the custody of the abuser. They're separated. This kind of fear is very real, and unfortunately I have to advise women that these are some of the consequences that they might face if they leave their husbands, leave the sponsors.
This is even before the sponsorship. It also happens after they get permanent residence with a conditional sponsorship. With the conditional sponsorship, it's hard enough for an abused woman, for example, in a court of law to prove that her abuser is an abuser, as we all know. Now I have to tell my clients, “You know what, you have to prove to an officer that you have been abused. If the officer doesn't believe you, you have to go to another hearing to prove that you have been abused”.
Now abuse can take many forms. Physical abuse can leave no marks. How do you prove emotional abuse? Mental abuse? Who is going to be believed?
These are often deterrents, when I am in a position of advising women. What can happen to me when I leave my husband? How will I cope with this? What will the system do to me if I leave? I have to advise them that these are possible consequences. This system is what perpetuates and what allows abuse.
I'd like to leave maybe with a few recommendations from my experiences to try to alleviate this kind of situation.
The first one is the conditional sponsorship. With the type of power that these men have over the women, it's not worth it. We need to take that away. It's not worth it to say that they can show that they're abused. Having to show that they're abused is a deterrent for them to leave because what they will lose if they were to leave means so much to them. They could lose so much if they left that it's just not worth it.
The second thing I'd like to recommend is that we have specific policies about allowing the women to stay temporarily if they leave and if they apply for humanitarian and compassionate grounds. We have a temporary resident permit that can be used to allow them to stay in the country temporarily and have status in the country temporarily, to allow them to work and to allow them to obtain permanent residence through their own means, through the Canadian experience class, for example. This has to be a specific policy instruction to the officers to allow women to be able to access this avenue.
We need to have officers specifically trained about abuse. Abuse can take so many different forms. It's not necessarily that if you don't go to the police there is no abuse. You have to have specific training about abuse in order to be able to deal with the situations.
Finally, we should have a “don't ask, don't tell” policy for police. Criminal law, where the victims are asked to testify against their abuser, should be separate from immigration. We can't have victims revictimized over and over again through the system.
Thank you very much.