By Francisco Rico-Martinez

Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan announced recently that she was introducing a "tough" immigration bill. In so doing, she earned her credentials as a member of the ever-expanding international club of "tough" immigration ministers.

In Europe countries have for several years been vying with each other to be as inhospitable as possible to asylum seekers.

The United States has adopted the "quick exit" policy of expedited removals and has applied to refugees and immigrants its favourite problem-solving measure: detention.

The Australian government, as if in an effort to be heard across the ocean, has outdone itself in the shrillness of its response, legislated and rhetorical, to unwelcome arrivals.

Joining the international trend, Canada's Immigration Minister promises to "close the back door to those who would abuse the system".

On the face of it, what could be more reasonable?

Who wants to welcome to Canada the criminals and abusers she says she is targetting?

Yet a closer look at the immigration bill raises many concerns about who will be affected by the proposed changes. Consider the following:

The bill would allow no one who has made a refugee claim in Canada ever to make a second claim. This is intended to prevent abusive repeat claims.

But it would also exclude the woman who withdraws her claim because the situation in her country has improved and goes home, only to experience a coup d'état which puts her in worse danger than ever.

Also excluded is the child who, aged 5, is refused refugee status along with his family and then grows up in the home country to become a political dissident.

Under the bill anyone who returns to Canada after less than a year is immediately sent back.

Those who return after more than a year are entitled to no more than a "risk assessment" conducted, apparently on paper, by immigration officials.

Yet what have these two people done to have the door close on them?

The bill also excludes refugee claims from people who are deemed serious criminals.

This is not the appropriate way to do things, from the point of view of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. It recommends that issues of criminality be reviewed within the context of the refugee hearing, where all the facts of the case can be weighed (the same recommendation has just recently been made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights).

The automatic exclusion of people convicted of crimes outside Canada is particularly dangerous for refugees. Persecutory states often use the criminal justice system as a mechanism of persecution.

Not infrequently, people who are being persecuted are convicted on the basis of trumped up charges for crimes that they have not in fact committed. Under the proposed system, such people will have no opportunity to show that they were wrongly convicted.

Even in cases where people have committed horrific crimes, we can ask whether closing the door is the right response.

After all, Spain's efforts to bring Pinochet into their country in order to try him gave hope to all those longing to see the perpetrators of crimes against humanity brought to justice.

Canada, however, persists in its policy of dealing with war criminals simply by deporting them, rather than trying them, and is writing this into the objectives of the immigration bill. Is this really, as the bill claims, the way to "promote international justice"?

Going from the worst to the best, consider how the bill treats the "best and brightest" (to borrow the Minister's terms) who choose to take up our invitation to become permanent residents. In a variety of ways, their rights are downgraded to be on a par with other non-citizens (this is reflected in the bill's terminology, which mostly lumps all non-Canadians together under the alienating term "foreign national"). Their residence status is no longer really "permanent", but rather renewable every five years.

If they fail to meet the residency requirements, they will find themselves pretty much thrown out on their ear, with no right to a hearing and no more than a paper review by the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Under the new bill, it seems we will be closing the door on "permanent" residents who, for example, need to care for sick family members abroad.

The Minister described her proposals as "closing the back door" in order to open the "front door" wider.

But, as the examples above show, distinguishing between the two doors is far from obvious.

A better goal would be to have a single door, and ensure that everyone trying to come through it is treated fairly and in conformity with our international human rights obligations.

Francisco Rico-Martinez is president of the Canadian Council for Refugees