Former child refugee Abdoul Abdi trying to skirt immigration process: lawyer
HALIFAX — A federal lawyer says a man who was a child refugee from Somalia when he first arrived in Nova Scotia is trying to get Canadian citizenship through the back door despite a violent crime conviction and his possible deportation.
Melissa Grant, who represents the federal public safety minister, told a Federal Court hearing Tuesday that a decision by the Canada Border Services Agency to refer Abdoul Abdi to a deportation hearing should not be overturned by a judicial review.
“What the applicant is actually trying to do here is to seek a de facto grant of citizenship,” Grant told Federal Court Judge Ann Marie McDonald, who later reserved her decision in the case.
Abdi, who was born in Saudi Arabia in 1993, lost his mother in a refugee camp when he was four and came to Canada with his sister and aunts two years later. He was taken into provincial care shortly after arriving in Nova Scotia.