CANADA: Nigeria woman lives in church's choir room
Episcopal News Service. July 10, 2007 [071007-04]
When Felicia Abimbola was ordered to return to her native Nigeria after 17 years in Ontario, she faced a desperate choice: Ask her church for sanctuary, or depart for Africa and decide whether to leave her 11-year-old Canadian-born daughter behind.
The Toronto Star reports that she hasn't left Trinity Anglican church in Mississauga since.
Abimbola doesn't want to return to Nigeria. She said she has no life there: Her husband died shortly after she arrived in Canada and she has since been living with her brother-in-law who, according to Nigerian custom, has become her common-law husband. They share a child, Alice, but he can't work and isn't able to care for her, the paper reported.
After arriving in Canada on a two-week visitor's permit, Abimbola has made three applications to stay on humanitarian grounds. She's awaiting a decision on the third.
Few illegal immigrants use it, but there is a last resort for those desperate to stay: church sanctuary. No law protects them there, but it's a long-standing tradition that the state won't invade church space to take someone into custody.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada knows of 10 such cases across the country of people living in places of worship to avoid deportation, according to the newspaper.
The choir room has white walls and fluorescent lights. It's furnished with donated armchairs and twin beds pushed together, the piano tucked to the side and her girl's stuffed toys scattered about.
When the church heard of Abimbola's plight, the vote was unanimous to give her sanctuary. They chose the choir room for her to inhabit because it has two large, curtained windows and is carpeted. Still, it's been hard.
"I can't sleep at night," she told the newspaper, adding she dislikes living so close to a graveyard.
And she's angry. She's no criminal, she said. "I'm not lazy. If I have the papers to work, I can work my head off. I'll work in any job."
"Canada has an internationally recognized system for people fleeing persecution in their home countries," Karen Shad-Evelyn of Citizenship and Immigration Canada told the Star. There are risk assessments and safeguards.
"But it's integral to the system that people respect our immigration laws," she said.
Chantal Desloges, Abimbola's lawyer, said it could be another two years before the government rules on Abimbola's latest appeal.
"(Nigeria) is no place for an innocent child," she said. But with no other family in Canada, Abimbola said her options for Alice are limited if she's deported.