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COPYRIGHT 2005 Centre for Refugee Studies
The refugee experience is far from over upon arrival in a place of asylum. Indeed, in many ways, the struggle to create a new life has only begun. As refugees can attest to, the process of fully normalizing their lives--reuniting with family members, securing local education for themselves and their children, finding appropriate employment, and participating in the political life of their new countries--is one fraught with legal and procedural difficulties, a process that leaves many in "limbo" long after their new lives should be well under way.
Similar limbo is experienced by the stateless, those denied the basic yet essential right of nationality. Like refugees, stateless people face often insurmountable difficulties in securing the core protections of the state in which they reside. And, as is the case for refugees, the existence of international treaties aimed at assuring their protection far from guarantees their physical or legal security.
It was a privilege to be invited to be guest editor of this special of issue of Refuge. Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) has been involved in Canadian policy related to refugees in limbo for a number of years. Our focus has been to effect policy change--to ensure that the Right of Landing fee (dubbed a head tax) would no longer be charged to Convention refugees, to ensure that Convention refugees and other protected persons can access government loan programs for university, and to propose a policy of automatic landing or permanent residency once a person has been deemed a Convention refugee. Seeking policy change to allow refugees to get on with their lives is often slow, frustrating, and sometimes tedious. But the stories which those in limbo tell--of their flight, of their life today, and of their incredible perseverance--demonstrate the requirement for at least as much perseverance to ensure justice is done.
What has become increasingly...
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