Kanchi Uttamchandani | Assistant News Editor
Featured image: Felipe Montoya and his family faced great uncertainty about their future. | Photo courtesy of YFile
Felipe Montoya, Faculty of Environmental Studies professor at York who was denied permanent residency in Canada due to his son’s Down syndrome, is now set to return to the country after the Ministry of Immigration overturned its decision.
Montoya, along with a group of advocates, launched a public awareness campaign shortly after receiving a rejection letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, or CIC, stating his son’s health condition might “reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on social services in Canada.” The decision was informed by Section 38 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA, which forbids entry to foreign nationals on health grounds.
The campaign was intended to create awareness of the contradictions that exist between the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and IRPA, explains Montoya. The Charter explicitly forbids discrimination based on disability, yet the IRPA, in the way it is interpreted and applied, is blatantly discriminatory against individuals with disabilities, according to Montoya.
Another important aspect that motivated the campaign was how temporary foreign workers with disabilities are unfairly victimized due to their immigration status, he adds.
Amid the public debate and outcry about immigration disability discrimination that Montoya’s case triggered, the professor was invited to discuss his case and share his recommendations for policy changes by the Ministry of Immigration in Ottawa.
“By the time the ministry invited us to meet with them, already more than three years had passed since we began the permanent residency application process. This level of uncertainty about our situation forced us to make important decisions to assure our family’s emotional and economic stability. We made plans to return to Costa Rica,” says Montoya.
Montoya received overwhelming support from the Canadian public and media and York.
“York University was 100 per cent supportive and allowed me to continue as tenured professor, carrying out my duties as Director of the Las Nubes Project in the new EcoCampus the Faculty of Environmental Studies had just inaugurated in southern Costa Rica,” says Montoya.
Rhonda Lenton, vice-president academic & provost, says, “York University is delighted that Professor Felipe Montoya and his family are returning to Canada to apply to become permanent residents. Felipe is a respected Environmental Studies professor at York and a leader in the university’s internationalization efforts.”
However, concerns persisted following the overturning of the inadmissibility ruling on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Patricia E. Perkins, a colleague of Montoya’s, expressed her disappointment with the basis of the decision. In an editorial to the Toronto Star, she wrote that it is “illegal and immoral” for Canada to require payment from taxpaying immigrants with differently abled family members as a condition for obtaining permanent residency and citizenship.
“These abhorrent side payments are usually calculated based on the estimated life expectancy of the differently abled family member times the average health/services cost of all (healthy) Canadians,” wrote Perkins.
Professor Montoya concurs.
“Overturning the ruling of inadmissibility on humanitarian and compassionate grounds was an initiative of the minister to deal with our case. We would have preferred the enactment of policy changes that would provide justice for all cases of disability discrimination, instead of our case simply being an
exception,” he says.
A member of Montoya’s Disability Positive working group, doctoral student Natalie Spagnuolo, is actively involved in initiatives calling
for changes to the IRPA.
One such initiative is the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, which is working to eradicate the discriminatory clause that designates disabled applicants as “medically inadmissible.”
“The group is seeking the elimination of legislation which assumes that people with disabilities are a burden to their society and place an ‘excessive demand’ on health and social services. The wording of the excessive demand clause and the assumptions behind it perpetuate negative stereotypes about people with disabilities, so there are attitudinal reasons for removing this clause altogether,” says Spagnuolo.
This is a precedent-setting case which carries broader implications for the disability community at large.
“We have provided the minister with a set of recommendations, and Disability Positive is also preparing a series of recommendations that will bring the IRPA in line with the Charter and international conventions. We have received assurances by the ministry that they are committed to policy changes, and that this coming fall we can expect positive movement in this direction,” says Montoya.
