Refugee dream gone wrong for Ottawa man
Project 4000 refugee who says he was molested is now facing deportation
Keong Tang faced hardship in Canada and now faces deportation, writes Kelly Egan,
Project 4000 was about everything that went right when a city and its churches opened compassionate arms to desperate people, in full flight on crowded boats and stormy seas.
Keong Tang is about everything that went wrong.
Tang, now 47, arrived with seven other members of his family in 1979, Vietnamese refugees who had spent a year in a camp near Hong Kong.
Now he’s on the verge of being deported, one of the first of the humanitarian “boat people” rescues ever to be sent back.
It is a long, complicated story, but in brief: Tang says that, when only 13, he was sexually abused by an Ottawa church volunteer assigned to help the family, never learned to read and write properly, flunked his citizenship test, developed a drug habit, turned to break-and-enters to support his abuse, struggled with uncontrolled anger that led to assault charges, and lived under a supposed deportation order from 1994 that meant nothing until the hammer dropped this year.
Until a last-minute delay Thursday, the Canada Border Services Agency had ordered him to report to the airport Monday for removal to Vietnam, leaving his mid-70s parents and three siblings behind. He’s now bought himself a little more time.
“I’m not this bad person they’re making me out to be,” said Tang, who cares for his ailing parents. “To be honest, I’m really scared to go back. I’m scared of turning my whole family upside down.”
Tang’s lawyer, Michael Bell, has asked the Federal Court for a stay on the removal order and is challenging the risk assessment the feds assembled as justification for deportation.
“It’s a crying shame,” said Bell, an immigration lawyer. “I hear a lot of sob stories in this business, but he is a textbook case of somebody who was a victim of pedophilia as a child.”
Bell says the immigration authorities have not been able to produce the original removal order, now almost 20 years old.
There was a failure to notify counsel at several key points, he says, not to mention that correspondence to his client would be almost useless.
“This is a man who can’t read.”
For the longest time, said Bell, Vietnam refused to take back its citizens who had been rejected in other countries, but those rules have now been changed. So far this year, 44 individuals in Canada have been “removed” to Vietnam among the total of roughly 14,000 deported souls.
(Indeed, when Tang arrived in 1979, he was described in documents as “stateless.”)
Tang said the family first lived on Glenridge Road, behind Merivale Mall. They were ecstatic to be here. “I was so happy just to have a bed.”
He began school in Grade 5, though he spoke no English.
A volunteer from a westend church was assigned to help the family, Tang said. The retired man took him swimming at Pinecrest Pool, bought him skates, took him to McDonald’s. He also helped his father with banking and understanding the Canadian system.
Egan: ‘I could not survive there’
Tang, meanwhile, said he and his father worked as dishwashers to earn money, while his mother found a job as a chambermaid.
The volunteer became a trusted ally of the family. He soon was taking Tang on trips out of town, mostly to Montreal, where he had business. This is where the abuse started, said Tang. But who could he turn to? “He was coming around helping my father. I couldn’t really say much. My father really needed his help.” Tang was soon doing chores at the man’s house, like cutting grass, and seeing him a couple of times a week.
When he turned 18, he was required to take a citizenship test to become Canadian. Tang says he failed, as did his mother, but she succeeded the second time. There would be no second test for him — he now had a criminal record.
“I didn’t become a citizen and that has haunted me my whole life.”
By now, he had dropped out of Sir Guy Carleton High School and was “partying” with friends. Acid, mushrooms, hash, eventually some cocaine, even crack. He admits to a number of break-and-enters to support his habit but, at the urging of police, he says he pleaded to a bunch more he likely didn’t do, “to help them clear the cases.”
He had a number of short stretches in jail, the longest a 10-month sentence. His last conviction was in 2009. There are a number of assaults and breaches, said Bell, but they are due to his temper.
“It’s a textbook case of an abused child acting out.” He couldn’t even complete an anger-management course, said Bell, because he couldn’t read the material properly.
Tang, meanwhile, supported himself by doing small contract jobs, such as door-to-door driveway sealing, landscape work and roofing.
“Canada’s great to me,” said Tang. “It gave me a good life.”
Bell said Vietnam only recently made travel documents available for former “stateless” citizens who fled the country during the mass evacuation after the end of the war.
“Instead of saying this is a problem that arose here in Canada and that we should be treating it, they’re not. They’re saying this is your problem now.”
Layered over this case is the federal government’s desire to remove undesirable foreigners from Canada, as exhibited in the just-passed Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act.
It is unclear what would happen to Tang upon arrival in Hanoi, but he is worried about ending up in a work camp due to his criminal past and drug use.
“I could not survive there. It’s like going to a whole new country.”