Take Mexico off ‘safe list:’ Protesters

VANCOUVER — Raul Gatica Bautista fled Mexico for Canada in 2005 with a bullet wound in his stomach and scarring on his face, grim testaments to the abuse the indigenous rights activist says he suffered at the hands of the Mexican police.

Canada accepted him as a refugee then, but Gatica Bautista says this country would turn him away today because of changes last year that placed Mexico on a list of 42 countries deemed safe by the federal government. Asylum seekers from these countries have fewer appeal options and are deported faster than refugee claimants from other countries.

On Wednesday, Gatica Bautista and groups of protesters in several cities called on the federal government to take Mexico off the so-called “safe list.” Countries on the list have been deemed by Ottawa as unlikely to produce legitimate asylum claimants.

The protesters disagree, and cited the recent disappearance and possible massacre of 43 student teachers in rural Mexico, and the ongoing persecution of indigenous rights activists, as evidence of Mexico’s dangerous environment.

The group No One is Illegal has launched a similar petition.

The acceptance rate for refugee claimants from Mexico has varied during the past 10 years, from a high of 28 per cent in 2006 to a low of eight per cent in 2009, according to figures provided by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Last year, it was 18 per cent.

But the number of refugee claims from Mexico has plummeted since the Canadian government imposed a travel visa on the country in 2009.

That year, the IRB received 9,313 new claims from Mexico, compared with just 114 last year.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada declined an interview on the subject, but in an emailed statement spokesman Remi Lariviere said the government placed Mexico on the list last year “because it was determined to be a country that respects human rights, offers state protection, and has mechanisms for redress if rights are infringed upon.”