A British man who was injured while working in Canada has been deported because authorities concluded keeping him in the country would be an economic burden for taxpayers.
Chris Mason, 36, was ordered deported to the United Kingdom after Canadian immigration officials determined that granting the wheelchair-bound man permanent resident status would create an undue economic burden.
Border services agents took Mason to Winnipeg's James Richardson International Airport on Monday and put him on a flight to Manchester. Several of Mason's friends were at the airport to give him money and his belongings — but they were barred from seeing him. Mason had been in detention since last Wednesday.
Mason said he had no desire to return to England where he hasn't lived since he was a child. He lived with his father in Greece before coming to Canada in 2001.
Once here, he began working as a truck driver in Ontario and British Columbia before settling in Winnipeg. The long-haul trucker became a paraplegic after damaging his back on the job.
Mason was further injured in 2007 when he was hit by a taxi while leaving hospital and has been unable to work since.
He had been living in Canada illegally without a visa for more than two years and had been collecting social assistance while battling Manitoba's Public Insurance Corp. over injury benefits when his application for permanent resident status was denied.
"You'd think he was a terrorist," said his mother Gillian Kilford from Manchester. "He was injured during the course of this work. After a period of readjustment he went back to work. He paid taxes in Canada."
She said her son would face hardship finding wheelchair accessible accommodation in Britain. Her son would not be able to negotiate the stairs in her home, she said, adding she had no idea Monday where or when Mason would arrive back in the U.K. since no one from the Canada Border Services Agency had contacted her to make arrangements to greet him at any U.K. airport. "I expect they'll just dump him at immigration," she said.
Advocates for the disabled have been lobbying for Canada to amend the Immigration Act, removing a clause that says anyone who might cause undue economic demand on the social welfare system can be denied the right to live here.
Refugees, who can be injured before being admitted to Canada, are excluded from the "excessive demand" clause in the Immigration Act, but the clause applies to everyone else.
"The Immigration Act frankly prohibits people with disabilities from immigrating to Canada," said Laurie Beachell of Disabled People's International. "The effect would mean people like Stephen Hawking, world-renowned physicist, brilliant man, could never become Canadian."
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