Family is defined by more than DNA

What makes a family? Is it the obvious ties of blood? Or is there more - connections forged by shared history, caring and mutual support? It seems evident that family involves a lot more than biology, which is why it’s good news that a judge has given an immigrant from China another chance to bring the child he raised as his daughter to Canada.

Zuan Zhong came to this country in 2010, fleeing persecution as a Catholic. Now a permanent resident, he applied to bring his wife and daughter here under the family reunification policy.

But a Canadian immigration official in Hong Kong turned down his application, arguing that the girl he had raised from infancy is not part of his family.

He and his wife had found her abandoned on their doorstep in 1997 and took her into their home.

But they never officially adopted her because of the stigma that surrounds such illegal or “black” children in China.

The immigration official, scrupulously applying Canada’s immigration rules, decided that the girl, named Shanrong and now 20 years old, did not qualify to be sponsored as Zhong’s daughter.

Zhong managed to appeal the ruling to the Federal Court. And in a victory for compassion and comm

on sense, Justice Keith Boswell ruled last month that the decision by the immigration officer in Hong Kong was “unintelligible, and therefore unreasonable.”

In particular, the judge found that the officer had not properly taken into account a document issued by the Chinese city of Fuqing stating that Shanrong was in a “de facto adoptive family relationship” with Zhong and his wife, Yunlan Fan.

The judge ordered that the case be examined again by another immigration officer who would take all the available facts into account.

He could also consider the fact that Immigration Canada’s own operation manual allows for sponsorship of “de facto” family members in special situations.

This is just one case, but it points to the need for rules to be applied in a flexible and humanitarian way.

A lot of time and money could have been saved if this family had been given the benefit of any doubt in the first place.

At least now Immigration Canada has a second chance to get it right by recognizing that family is often defined by much more than shared DNA.