The Exclusion of Roma Claimants in Canadian Refugee Policy

Patterns of Prejudice
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The exclusion of Roma claimants in Canadian

refugee policy
Cynthia Levine-Rasky, Julianna Beaudoin & Paul St Clair
To cite this article: Cynthia Levine-Rasky, Julianna Beaudoin & Paul St Clair (2014) The
exclusion of Roma claimants in Canadian refugee policy, Patterns of Prejudice, 48:1, 67-93, DOI:
10.1080/0031322X.2013.857477
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Patterns of Prejudice, 2014
Vol. 48, No. 1, 67–93, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2013.857477
The exclusion of Roma claimants in Canadian

refugee policy
CYNTHIA LEVINE-RASKY, JULIANNA BEAUDOIN AND

PAUL ST CLAIR
ABSTRACT The arrival of thousands of European Roma seeking refugee status in

Canada elicited a range of legislative and policy instruments that severely restrict
their acceptance and create conditions antagonistic to further admissions. Interven-
tions have included visa restrictions, actions by Immigration and Refugee Board, the
Balanced Refugee Reform Act followed by the Protecting Canada’s Immigration
System Act, and ministerial rhetoric about the illegitimacy of Roma as refugees. Other
factors have involved interpretations of persecution in relation to the Geneva
Convention and Protocol, and the implications of the conditions required for
membership to the European Union. These political circumstances in large part
determine Canadian acceptance rates for the Roma. Their systematic exclusion is
reminiscent of the historical treatment of other groups due to institutional racism. In
the new racism, however, refugee law and policy is racist in effect while evading the
language of race.
KEYWORDS acceptance rates, asylum-seekers, Canada, Convention refugee, Immigrant

and Refugee Board (IRB), immigration, institutional racism, new racism, refugee claimants,
refugee law, refugee policy, Roma, visa restrictions
n Thursday, 27 October 2011, the front page headline of the Toronto Sun
O read: ‘Feds vow crackdown as Pearson [Airport] flooded with bogus
Hungarian Roma claims’. Those motivated to read recent refugee policy in
more depth might arrive at a few conclusions. First, they might imagine
either that the Roma are a previously unknown immigrant group, or that
they only arrived in Canada very recently due to their dissatisfaction with
their poor conditions in Europe. Next, they may doubt that the Roma qualify
as authentic refugees. And, finally, readers may reason that these families
landed in Canada to take advantage of the country’s social largesse, justifying
many readers’ resentment of these asylum-seekers in economically trying
times.
All of these conclusions are incorrect. The Romani people have existed in
Europe for centuries, having originated as a mixed group of Hindu and
Dravidian soldiers and camp followers in India. According to some sources,
they fused into the Romani people in Anatolia after they left India in the
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
68 Patterns of Prejudice
eleventh century.1 The change of name from ‘Gypsy’ to ‘Roma’ was formally
announced in 1971 at the first World Congress of Romani People in London.
The Congress then established the International Romani Union as well as a
Romani flag and anthem, symbolic testaments of the Roma people as a
distinct ethnic collectivity. The adoption of the term ‘Roma’ is reflected in
specific European NGOs, such as the European Roma Rights Centre and the
European Roma Information Office, among other more general European
organizations, such as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights
and the Council of Europe.2 Subgroups, including the Kalderash, Machvaiya,
Churaria, Lovara, and Vlax, Romanichals, Bashalde, Xoraxane, Russian/
Serbian Lovara and ‘New Wave’, may share the Romani language but differ
in customs, beliefs, traditional laws and ceremonies.3 The use of the term
‘Roma’ is not in use by all groups, some of whom prefer to use ‘Gypsy’ in
English or its equivalent in their national languages. Despite this deep cultural
pluralism, the label ‘Roma’ enjoys consensus among a majority of community
leaders and members, and is reflected in most of the current literature.4
Roma are not a new immigrant group/ethnicity nor are they newcomers to
Canada, having settled there since at least the late nineteenth century.5 Their
numbers received a significant boost in the late 1980s through early 1990s, and
again in the late 2000s, when they arrived as refugee claimants from Central and
East European countries. Overall, the Roma population in Canada is estimated
to be between 60,000 and 80,000,6 and in Europe, where they are the largest non-
territorially-based ethnic minority, their estimated population is 8–12 million,7
1 Adrian Marsh, ‘“No Promised Land”: History, Historiography and the Origins of the
Gypsies’, PhD thesis, University of Greenwich, London, 2008, cited in Ronald Lee, ‘A
new look at our Roma origins and diaspora’, 2009, available on the at Romano Kopachi
website at http://kopachi.com/articles/a-new-look-at-our-Roma-origins-and-diaspora-
by-ronald-lee/#more-43 (viewed 9 July 2013).
2 See European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), ‘Roma’, available on the
FRA website at http://fra.europa.eu/en/theme/roma (viewed 15 October 2013); and the
Council of Europe, ‘Descriptive glossary of terms relating to Roma issues’, 18 May
2012, available on the Council of Europe website at http://a.cs.coe.int/team20/cahrom/
documents/Glossary%20Roma%20EN%20version%2018%20May%202012.pdf (viewed
9 July 2013).
3 For Kalderash, Machvaiya, Churaria, and Lovara, see Ronald Lee, The Living Fire
(Toronto: Magoria 2009). For the other groups, see Ian Hancock, Danger! Educated
Gypsy: Selected Essays, ed. Dileep Karanth (Hatfield, Herts: University of Hertfordshire
Press 2010).
4 Will Guy, ‘Romani identity and post-Communist policy’, in Will Guy (ed.), Between Past
and Future: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe (Hatfield, Herts: University of
Hertfordshire Press 2011), 3–32.
5 Lee, ‘A new look at our Roma origins and diaspora’.
6 Ronald Lee, ‘Post-Communism Romani migration to Canada’, Cambridge Review of
International Affairs, vol. 13, no. 2, 2000, 51–70.
7 Arno Tanner. ‘The Roma of Eastern Europe: still searching for inclusion’, Migration
Information Source (online), May 2005, at www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/
display.cfm?id=308 (9 July 2013).
LEVINE-RASKY, BEAUDOIN AND ST CLAIR 69
a figure that includes the entire network of Roma groups. Some of these
groups are not consistently placed—and do not place themselves—in the
Roma category (for example, the Romanichels of England, the Sinti of
Western Europe and the Gitanos of Spain).8 This apparent impasse in
ethnic identification is resolved when we realize that the expectation of
‘objective’ qualifications for membership in a social group—common
language use, skin colour or cultural practice—is an outcome of inequitable
power relations. The controversy surrounding the refugee determination
of Roma is tied to a range of politically driven actions and varying
interpretations of persecution. Based on definitions produced by the 1951
Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967
Protocol, the treatment of Roma in Europe is characterized by an egregious
racism clearly recognizable as systemic in nature. This in itself ought to
qualify them as refugees. However, political decision-making and public
opinion reflect longstanding hostilities that know no national boundaries.
While Roma flee permanent exclusion in Europe, as newcomers in Canada
they face multiple obstacles in their desire for inclusion in Canadian society.
The most formidable of these are the machinations of Canadian refugee
policy.
Over 90 per cent of all recent Roma claimants apply for refugee status in
Ontario, the majority within the Greater Toronto area.9 Their reception
conflicts with Canada’s principle of humanitarian admissions for which it was
awarded the UN Nansen medal in 1982. However, hostility towards refugees
in Canada is not a phenomenon that originated with the arrival of Roma
fleeing post-Communist Europe. In fact, the record of Canada’s attitude to
refugees—and to many groups of immigrants generally—demonstrates the
use of a range of instruments and interventions designed to place restrictions
on or entirely reject groups regarded as undesirable. Current measures that
explicitly aim to limit the admission of Roma people may qualify as only the
most recent example of institutional racism in Canada’s national immigration
policy. Referring to the negative impact of organizational practices and
procedures on racialized groups, institutional racism may be exercised with
or without the conscious intent of individuals.10 What is critical about
institutional racism is its impact on groups. For refugee claimants, its
cumulative effect is a kind of death by policy.
8 James A. Goldston, ‘Roma rights, Roma wrongs’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 2, 2002,
146–62 (149).
9 Immigrant and Refugee Board (IRB), ‘Country report: October to December 2009 and
year to date 2009’, obtained on 25 January 2010 from the IRB. Figures for 2011 were 87
per cent of Hungarian Roma and 100 per cent of Czech Roma; IRB, ‘Country report:
October to December 2011 and year to date 2011’, obtained on 9 February 2012 from
the IRB.
10 Augie Fleras, Unequal Relations: An Introduction to Race, Ethnic, and Aboriginal Dynamics
in Canada, 7th edn (Toronto: Pearson Education Canada 2011).
The treatment of Roma in Europe
Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown define racialization as the process by

which an allegedly meaningful difference is attributed to some group, and
deemed to constitute its essential nature.11 It also involves a negative
evaluation of a group’s potential to contribute substantively to society. The
racialization of the Roma in Europe is indisputable. Components of their
racialization include an imputation of ‘blood purity’, an alleged physical
difference and an essentialized nature and style of life that often involves an
innate criminality. The Roma’s long history is one of segregation from
European society. All European states have taken measures aimed at the
exclusion of Roma since their appearance in the region in the fourteenth
century. In the German regions of the Holy Roman Empire, the Imperial
Diet issued three edicts between 1497 and 1500 in which Roma (identified
as Egyptians, Saracens, Zegynen or Bohemians) were accused of espionage
and singled out for expulsion.12 Similar edicts were enforced in the
Swiss regions of the Empire, and also in Spain and Portugal. In England
a 1554 law sentenced nomadic Gypsy males to death and Elizabeth
I introduced the death penalty for anyone who befriended ‘Egyptians’.
The Roma were expelled from Sweden, Denmark and Norway in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in France throughout the sixteenth
century to the mid-seventeenth century. In Finland it was a hanging offence
to be born a ‘Gypsy’.13 Approximately 148 anti-Roma laws were passed
in German lands between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, including a
1714 statute mandating death for all Romani males and the beating and
branding of females and children.14 Roma who lived in countries of the
Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire endured forced assimilation policies
that criminalized the use of the Romani language and Romani names. As
late as the eighteenth century, the French court ordered the extermination of
all adult Roma men and the maiming of Roma women and children.
Slavery deprived 200,000–600,000 Roma of their freedom, and was officially
abolished by the Moldavian and Wallachian parliaments only in 1855 and
1856, respectively. Complete legal freedom was established only in 1864,
two years after the creation of Romania as an independent unified state.15
11 Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown. Racism, 2nd edn (London and New York:
Routledge 2003).
12 Dimitrina Petrova, ‘The Roma: between a myth and the future’, Social Research, vol. 70,
no. 1, 2003, 111–61.
13 Janina Bauman, ‘Demons of other people’s fear: the plight of the Gypsies’, Thesis Eleven,
no. 54, August 1998, 51–62 (53).
14 Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies (London: Chatto-
Heinemann Educational for Sussex University Press 1972), 42–5; Petrova, ‘The
Roma’, 124.
15 Petrova, ‘The Roma’.
History is replete with accounts of violent acts committed against the Roma
by neighbours, states, and institutions.16
The most recent genocidal act, the Holocaust, was rooted in centuries of
anti-Gypsy laws and beliefs. In 1899, a special register was set up in Munich to
collect information about the movement of Roma and actions taken against
them. Inspired by the 1905 publication of Alfred Dillman’s Zigeuner Buch
(Gypsy Book), which identified die Zigeunerplage (the Gypsy plague), these
efforts multiplied, and a 1911 conference was organized to coordinate data
collection in six other regions of Germany.17 An ‘infectious vogue for restrictive
measures’ had already in 1906 led to discriminatory licensing for Roma
tradespeople and families.18 In 1936, the Rassenhygienische und Bevölker-
ungsbiologische Forschungsstelle (Research Centre for Racial Hygiene and
Population Biology) was established in Berlin under the directorship of
Dr Robert Ritter, whose team collected genealogical data used in the Nazi
project to eliminate the Roma along with the Jews; by 1942, Ritter’s team had
amassed information on virtually all 30,000 Roma residing in Germany, Austria
and annexed areas.19 The project to eliminate the Roma was well under way by
the mid-1930s.20 Civic rights were removed, an alien status conferred, and
sterilization, torture, execution and massacres were carried out against them.
Mass internment of Roma in concentration and extermination camps at
Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Chelmno and elsewhere began in 1933.21
Estimates of Romani deaths over the course of the Second World War range
between 0.5 and 1.5 million, possibly representing 70–80 per cent of the
European Roma population.22 Precise numbers are impossible to obtain due to
16 See David Crowe, A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia, 2nd edn
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2007); Shannon L. Fogg, ‘“They are undesirables”:
local and national responses to Gypsies during World War II’, French Historical Studies,
vol. 31, no. 2, 2008, 327–58; Ian Hancock, The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy
Slavery and Persecution (Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma Publishers 1987); and Belinda Cooper,
‘“We have no Martin Luther King”: Eastern Europe’s Roma minority’, World Policy
Journal, vol. 18, no. 4, 2001/2, 69–78.
17 Angus Fraser, The Gypsies, 2nd edn (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell 1995).
18 Ibid., 249–50.
19 Donald Kenrick and Gratton Puxon, Gypsies under the Swastika, revd edn (Hatfield,
Herts: University of Hertfordshire Press 2009), 15.
20 Henry R. Huttenbach, ‘The Roma porajmos: the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Gypsies’,
Nationalities Papers, vol. 19, no. 3, 1991, 373–94. See also Kenrick and Puxon, Gypsies
under the Swastika; and Gerhard Baumgartner, ‘Concentration camps’, available on the
Council of Europe website at www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/roma/Source/FS2/5.1_con
centration-camps_english.pdf (viewed 15 October 2013).
21 Kenrick and Puxon, Gypsies under the Swastika. See also Ian Hancock, ‘Gypsy history in
Germany and neighboring lands: a chronology to the Holocaust and beyond’,
Nationalities Papers, vol. 19, no. 3, 1991, 395–412.
22 Huttenbach, ‘The Roma porajmos’, 389.
the legions of Roma who were simply added to the category of the ‘remainder
to be liquidated’.23
Under the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, hostility towards the Roma
was, relatively speaking, suppressed. However, this came at a significant cost as
Roma were forced to abandon their livelihoods and homes in order to conform
to the Communist system. Today, most Roma have abandoned their traditional
way of life and are concentrated in low-income housing developments or
outright ghettoes throughout Europe. Many have lost their native language and
traditional skills.24 They have few or no territorial, political, military or
economic rights, and no homeland in which they might find refuge and
demand equal treatment. Perceived as racially rather than ethnically distinct,25
they are usually regarded as vagrant, disloyal and abject. The problem is
exacerbated by scant concern for their high unemployment rate, poor housing
and health, low incomes and low educational attainment. The outlook for their
social equality is discouraging despite the growth of civil organizations and
human rights initiatives,26 which have proven powerless in stopping the
frequent verbal and physical attacks by neo-Nazis and ordinary citizens.
According to a recent report released by the Council of Europe, the Roma
‘see similarities between much of today’s anti-Roma rhetoric with the
language used in the past in Europe by Nazis and fascists and other
extremists’.27 A selected review of systematic and state-sanctioned attacks on
European Roma reveals a number of events: France began to expel its Roma
population in the summer of 2009 and Italy followed in the summer of 2011,
and expulsions are ongoing in these two countries;28 since 2008, evictions of
Roma have also continued in Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia
23 Ian Hancock, We Are the Romani People (Hatfield, Herts: University of Hertfordshire
Press 2002), 243.
24 Angus Bancroft, ‘“Gypsies to the camps!” Exclusion and marginalisation of Roma in
the Czech Republic’, Sociological Research Online, vol. 4, no. 3, 1999, at www.socreson
line.org.uk/4/3/bancroft.html (viewed 9 July 2013).
25 Ioan Aluas and Liviu Matei, ‘Discrimination and prejudice: minorities in Romania’, in
Danièle Joly (ed.), Scapegoats and Social Actors: The Exclusion and Integration of Minorities
in Western and Eastern Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998), 101–11.
26 Zdenka Jarabová, ‘The Romany minority in the Czech lands’, in Joly (ed.), Scapegoats
and Social Actors, 87–100.
27 Thomas Hammarberg, Human Rights of Roma and Travellers in Europe (Strasbourg:
Council of Europe Publishing 2012), 8, available on the Council of Europe website at
www.coe.int/t/commissioner/source/prems/prems79611_GBR_CouvHumanRightsOf
Roma_WEB.pdf (viewed 9 July 2013).
28 For expulsions in France, see ‘France’s “scandalous” expulsion of Roma camps
resumes’, Telegraph, 27 August 2012; for Italy, see Corinna Wiedel, ‘Italy: forced
evictions still continue’, 17 January 2013, available on the romea.cz website at www.
romea.cz/en/news/italy-forced-evictions-still-continue (viewed 9 July 2013).
and Slovakia. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA)
found that ‘segregation is still evident in many EU Member States, sometimes
as a result of deliberate government policy’.29 Since January 2008, anti-Roma
violence in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia has involved fire-
bombing, shootings, stabbings, beatings and other acts of violence, often
targetting families and children. Extremist and openly racist groups spread
hate speech in these countries and organize anti-Roma marches.30 Roma
continue to live in a Kosovo refugee camp where lead contamination has
reportedly resulted in dozens of deaths.31 Since the 1950s, forced sterilizations
of Roma women have been carried out in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Czech
Republic and Slovakia, with cases reported as recently as 2004.32 A 2005
report by the Czech Public Defender of Rights (Veřejný ochránce práv),
known as the Ombudsman, noted that a group of Charter 77 signatories had
labelled sterilization programmes ‘without hesitation as a technique on the
verge of meeting the attributes of genocide’.33 Educational segregation of
Roma children is systematic in many European countries such as Bulgaria, the
29 FRA, Housing Conditions of Roma and Travellers in the European Union: Comparative Report
(Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities 2009), 5,
available on the FRA website at http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/research/publications/
publications_per_year/2009/pub-cr-roma-housing_en.htm (viewed 9 July 2013).
30 See, for example, Cahn and Albert, Human Rights of Roma and Travellers in Europe;
European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), ‘Attacks against Roma in Hungary, the Czech
Republic and the Slovak Republic,’ 15 July 2012, available on the ERRC website at
www.errc.org/article/attacks-against-roma-in-hungary-the-czech-republic-and-the-slo
vak-republic/3042 (viewed 1 August 2013); European Union Agency for Fundamental
Rights (FRA), ‘EU-MIDIS Data in Focus Report 6: Minorities as victims of crime’,
November 2012, available on the FRA website at http://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/
2012/eu-midis-data-focus-report-6-minorities-victims-crime (viewed 15 October 2013);
Bernard Rorke, ‘Hate is where the heart is: time for Europe to confront anti-
Gypsyism’, openDemocracy, 2 May 2013, at www.opendemocracy.net/bernard-rorke/
hate-is-where-heart-is-time-for-europe-to-confront-anti-gypsyism (viewed 15 October
2013); Human Rights First, ‘Violence against Roma: hate crime survey’, 2009, available
on the Human Rights First website at www.humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/
pdf/FD-080609-factsheet-violence-against-roma.pdf (viewed 15 October 2013).
31 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE Mission in Kosovo,
‘Background Report: Lead contamination in Mitrovicë/Mitrovica affecting the Roma
community’, February 2009, available on the OSCE website at www.osce.org/kosovo/
36234 (viewed 15 October 2013); Centre for Research on Globalization, ‘Roma people
live for 10 years in contaminated camp in Kosovo’, 1 April 2010, available on the Global
Research website at www.globalresearch.ca/roma-people-live-for-10-years-in-contami
nated-refugee-camp-in-kosovo/18438 (viewed 15 October 2013).
32 Cahn and Albert, Human Rights of Roma and Travellers in Europe; Gwendolyn Albert,
‘Forced sterilization and Romani women’s resistance in Central Europe’, Different Takes
(Hampshire College), no. 71, Summer 2011, 1–4, available on the Hampshire College
website at http://popdev.hampshire.edu/projects/dt/71 (viewed 15 October 2013).
33 Quoted in Gwendolyn Albert, ‘Roma face coercive sterilization’, World War 4 Report,
no. 136, August 2007, available on the WW4 website at www.ww4report.com/node/
4283 (viewed 9 July 2013).
Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Macedonia, Northern

Ireland, Portugal and Spain.34 Daily news reports of anti-Roma activities and
the failure of authorities to protect the victims appear on numerous
websites.35 The hatred of Roma peoples goes on, according to Ian Hancock,
despite the fact that they are not responsible for any war and have never
posed a political or economic threat wherever they have lived. Yet so
entrenched is ‘anti-gypsyism’ that it has shaped their entire history. Further-
more, Hancock argues, the persecution of the Roma continues to this day,36 a
consequence of the everyday racism of European modernity.37
Roma refugees in Canada and Canadian refugee policy
No historically accurate information on the numbers of Roma immigrants to

Canada exists because Romani ethnicity has never been recorded. Counted as
European nationals from Central and Eastern Europe, the Roma created a
‘culture of invisibility’ in Canada’s cities.38 In 1976 the Immigration Act was
amended to respond to the growing number of displaced persons appearing
without identity documents at Canada’s borders. To illustrate, in 1980, fewer
than 1,600 asylum-seekers arrived, a figure that grew to 18,000 in 1986.39 A
1989 amendment to the 1976 law established the Immigration and Refugee
Board (IRB) whose mandate it is to decide on individual cases. Who counts as
a refugee? The 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, amended by
34 Jack Greenberg, ‘Report on Roma education today: from slavery to segregation and
beyond’, Columbia Law Review, vol. 110, no. 4, 2010, 919–1001; Julia M. White, ‘Pitfalls
and bias: entry testing and the overrepresentation of Romani children in special
education’, Roma Education Fund, 2012, http://www.romaeducationfund.hu/publica-
tions/studies-and-researches; Open Society Institute, EU Monitoring and Advocacy
Program, Equal Access to Quality Education for Roma, 2 vols (Budapest and New York:
Open Society Institute 2007), available on the Open Society website at www.open
societyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/2roma_20070329_0.pdf (vol. 1) and www.
opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/equal_20071218.pdf (vol. 2) (viewed 15
October 2013); Amnesty International, ‘Submission to the European Commission on
the implementation of the equality directives’, Index IOR 61/002/2013, 31 January 2013,
available on the Amnesty International website at www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/
IOR61/002/2013/en/bbf813ce-2ebf-471f-8fa8-541832eaf4e0/ior610022013en.pdf (viewed
15 October 2013).
35 See, for example, the European Roma Information Office (www.erionet.eu), Roma Daily
News, a Yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Roma_Daily_News), the Rome-
diaFoundation (http://romediafoundation.wordpress.com), the Roma Virtual Network
(http://www.valery-novoselsky.org/romavirtualnetwork.html) and the European Roma
and Travellers Forum (www.ertf.org).
36 Hancock, We Are the Romani People, 246.
37 See Bancroft, ‘“Gypsies to the camps!”’.
38 Lee, ‘Post-Communism Romani migration to Canada’.
39 Scott D. Watson, ‘Manufacturing threats: asylum seekers as threats or refugees?’,
Journal of International Law and International Relations, vol. 3, no. 1, 2007, 95–117.
the 1967 Protocol on the Status of Refugees, defines a refugee (known as a

‘Convention refugee’) as any person
owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is
outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is
unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having
a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is
unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it (Article 1,
paragraph A2).40
Despite the authority of these documents, they do not govern signatory

countries’ refugee admission policies. Indeed, states operate with discretion
and that often leads to discriminatory effects. ‘Particularly when faced with
an influx of unwanted persons, states may show a racial or ideological or
other bias in their procedures that determine who is recognized as a legal
refugee.’41
The Canadian government and the IRB have instituted a number of
measures to reform the refugee determination process, the consequence of
which has been a systematic exclusion of Roma claimants. These measures
turn on how persecution is distinguished from discrimination. The United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Handbook on Procedures
and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and
the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees makes the following
distinction: ‘Where serious discriminatory or other offensive acts are
committed by the local populace, they can be considered as persecution if
they are knowingly tolerated by the authorities, or if the authorities refuse,
or prove unable, to offer effective protection (paragraph 65).’42 Rebecca
Dowd discusses the problematic ways that ‘discrimination’ and ‘persecu-
tion’ have been parsed in the context of international refugee law (including
in Canada). She argues that ‘decision makers should not just measure
persecution by asking whether the core minimums are being enjoyed: they
should consider the effect of the discrimination on the meaningful
enjoyment of those rights, and on the individual applicant more generally.’43
In its resolution of cases, Arthur Helton states that the IRB has not
40 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (Geneva: United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees 2011), available on the UNHCR website at www.unhcr.org/
protect/PROTECTION/3b66c2aa10.pdf (viewed 10 July 2013).
41 Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe and Roger A. Coate, The United Nations and
Changing World Politics, 3rd edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 2001), 188.
42 Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951
Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, HCR/IP/4/Eng/REV.1,
Geneva, January 1992, available on the UNHCR website at www.unhcr.org/publ/PUBL/
3d58e13b4.pdf (viewed 10 July 2013).
43 Rebecca Dowd, ‘Dissecting discrimination in refugee law: an analysis of its meaning
and its cumulative effect’, International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 23, no. 1, 2011,
28–53 (46).
generally paid sufficient attention to UN standards in determining

persecution of refugee claimants. Indeed, he claims, its approach to
adjudication has been ‘narrow and grudging’; giving little weight to
the specific claims of individuals, the IRB has often ruled that claimants’
fear of discrimination is ‘grossly exaggerated’ and does not amount to
persecution.44 For the IRB, formal protection under European law has been
sufficient proof of satisfactory conditions for European Roma despite the
absence of substantive enforcement of that law. Diverse observers have
noted what appears to be a direct relationship between very large, sudden
decreases in the acceptance rate of Roma refugees and Canadian govern-
ment actions that are anti-refugee in their intent and consequences.45
Among the multiple policy and legislative instruments available for the
rejection of Roma refugee claims are shifting visa restrictions, ministerial
rhetoric, IRB activities and various pieces of legislation.
The first significant piece of legislation involved the strategic use of visa
restrictions for Czech and Hungarian nationals trying to enter Canada.
Visas for Czech travellers were imposed in 1998 and for Hungarians in
2001 as a result of a significant influx of Roma refugee claimants from
those countries. When the visa restriction for Hungary was lifted in 2008, it
became the top-ranking source country for refugee claimants for some
years. Visas were lifted for the Czech Republic in 2007 but reimposed in
2009; they remain in place at the time of writing. This measure had a
dramatic effect on arrivals of refugees from that country (see Table 1). The
Canadian government explained their 2009 strategy of visa requirements
for Czech nationals as being a way to avoid bogus refugee claimants who
abused the refugee system.46 Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stated:
44 Arthur C. Helton, ‘Roma and forced migration: lessons of recent Canadian cases’,
report for the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), 3 April 1999, available on the
ERRC website at http://errc.org/cikk.php?cikk=537 (viewed 10 July 2013).
45 Paul St Clair, ‘Roma migration: from EU to Canada, and back’, presentation at the
Canadian Association for Refugees and Forced Migration Studies Annual Conference,
McGill University, Montreal, 11 May 2011; Peter O’Neil, ‘Controversy swirls over
Canada’s part in Roma debate’, Postmedia News, 27 August 2010, available on the
examiner.com website at www.examiner.com/article/controversy-swirls-over-canada-s-
part-roma-debate (viewed 21 August 2013); Toronto District School Board, minutes
of the ‘Regular Meeting’, 13 April 2011, 4, available on the Toronto District School
Board website at www.tdsb.on.ca/Leadership/Boardroom/AgendaMinutes.aspx?Type=
M&Year=2011&Filename=110413+Min+Final.pdf (viewed 16 October 2013).
46 Julianna Butler, ‘Contested Histories and Identities: Roma Refugees in Toronto’, MA
thesis, University of Western Ontario, 2009; Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC)
press release, ‘Canada imposes a visa on the Czech Republic’, 13 July 2009, available on
the CIC website at www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2009/2009-07-
13a.asp (viewed 11 July 2013); Joseph Castaldo, ‘No longer welcome: Canada’s
Immigration Refugee Board closes the door on Romani refugees from Hungary’,
BriarPatch, vol. 34, no. 8, December 2005/January 2006, 5; Michael Valpy, ‘Canada
reimposing visa controls to stop Roma asylum-seekers, Czech media say’, Globe and
Mail, 3 July 2009, A6; St Clair, ‘Roma migration’.
‘We can’t allow the systematic abuse of people who are basically coming to
Canada as economic migrants, jumping the queue, by going through the
backdoor of the asylum system.’47 Despite the government’s repeated
documentation of persecution against European Roma,48 the minister and
his supporters insist that they are merely seeking the economic opportun-
ity—a euphemism for the alleviation of poverty—to avail themselves of
Canada’s largesse. In claiming that Czech Roma refugees arriving in
Canada are not victims of persecution in the Czech Republic, Kenney
disqualifies them from being considered ‘Convention refugees’.49 During a
visit to Hungary in 2011, he remarked on Hungarian television: ‘Being a
refugee is not just about whether they like the state they’re living in or not,
and it’s not about whether life is easy there or not, nor is it about occasional
acts of discrimination.’50
Kenney’s view is consistent with media reports that claimants are inherently
untrustworthy and abuse the system,51 a rhetoric that is popular among
industrialized states that support the ‘deterrence and deflection’ of asylum-
seekers.52 The ministry Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) took up
the rhetoric of suspicion in its 2009 annual report to parliament, explaining
that it had ‘taken steps, through the imposition of visas on the Czech Republic
and Mexico … to protect the integrity of the asylum program’.53 The lifting of
47 Quoted in CTV.ca news staff, ‘Kenney defends visa rules for Czech nationals’, 15 July
2009, available on the CTV News website at www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/
20090714/visas_immigration_090714 (viewed 11 July 2013).
48 See, for example, IRB, Czech Republic: Situation of Roma, including Treatment by the
Authorities as well as in the Education, Employment, Health and Housing Sectors; State
Protection and Assistance from Romani Organizations; Prevalence of Roma among Judges,
Legislators, Physicians, Police and Teachers (January 2006–November 2007), 12 December
2007, Document CZE102667.EX, available on the UNHCR website at www.refworld.
org/docid/47d6544a23.html (viewed 11 July 2013).
49 Peter O’Neil, ‘Canada urges Hungary to stem flood of asylum-seekers’, Vancouver Sun,
7 October 2009; Peter O’Neil, ‘Canada flooded with Czech refugee claims’, CanWest
News Service, 15 April 2009, available on the Immigration Watch Canada website at www.
immigrationwatchcanada.org/2009/04/15/canada-flooded-with-czech-roma-refugee-
claims (viewed 11 July 2013).
50 For the television programme broadcast in Hungary on Hír TV, see ‘Náciveszélyt
riogatnak a Kanadába emigráló retkesek–Célpont’, 4 December 2011, available on
YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=P20EWZaXXVk (viewed 11 July 2013); the
English translation of Kenney’s statement by Gina Csanyi-Robah is quoted in Bilbo
Poynter, ‘Is Canada telling Hungary’s Roma “Do not seek asylum here”?’, Christian
Science Monitor, 24 January 2013.
51 Carol Bohmer, and Amy Shuman, Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century
(London and New York: Routledge 2008); Miro Cernetig, ‘Ottawa accused of fast-
tracking unsavoury immigrants’, Globe and Mail, 30 August 1994, A2.
52 Judith Kumin, ‘Can this marriage be saved? National interest and ethics in asylum
policy’, Canadian Issues, March 2004.
53 CIC, Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, 2009 (Ottawa: CIC 2009), available on
the CIC website at www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/annual-report2009/
index.asp (viewed 11 July 2013).
visa restrictions for Hungary and the Czech Republic in 2007–8 was due to
strong pressure on Canada by the EU to treat new East European member
states in the same manner that the West European member states treated
them. The relationship with the EU continues to influence Canadian refugee
policy. The absence of a visa restriction for Hungary today is, it seems, due to
negotiations between the Canadian government and the EU. The cumulative
value of Canada’s trade with Hungary was $12.1 billion at the end of 2010 in
the sectors of finances and services.54 Furthermore, EU officials identified the
visa restriction on nationals from the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania
as a barrier to the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), a
trade pact between Canada and the EU. In fact, new immigration laws
(discussed below) will eliminate that stumbling block by discouraging
refugee claimants from those countries and thereby enable the lifting of the
visa requirement.55
The second substantive measure was the particular procedure of the IRB
known as ‘lead cases’, that is, cases that are to act as templates for other
refugee cases. In October and November 1998, two such cases, involving
two Hungarian claimants, Geza Kozak and Sandor Smajda and their
families, were intended to serve as a guide for future panels of IRB judges
who were facing unprecedented numbers of claims by Hungarian Roma.
On 20 January 1999, the IRB judges rejected the claims and, when the case
was brought before the Federal Court in 2004, the IRB’s decision was
upheld. The Federal Court stated: ‘There are well-documented cases of
segregation and different treatment in education, prejudice in housing,
including incidents of forced evictions, discrimination in employment,
cases of police indifference and even brutality.’ However, it did not accept
that these conditions could be designated as persecution. ‘That is not to say
that there are no instances in Hungary today in which the levels of
discrimination against Roma would not amount to persecution. In our
54 ‘Canadian-Hungary relations’, July 2011, available on the Foreign Affairs and Interna-
tional Trade Canada website at www.canadainternational.gc.ca/hungary-hongrie/bilater
al_relations_bilaterales/index.aspx?lang=eng&menu_id=13 (viewed 12 July 2013).
According to the same webpage, large Canadian investors in Hungary include
Westcast, Linamar, Bombardier LAB International, Winstar, General Woods, and
Veneers. Trade between Canada and Hungary totalled $635.7 million in 2012, with
Canadian exports at $214 million and imports at $421.7 million: ‘Fact sheet: Hungary’,
June 2013, available on the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada website at
www.canadainternational.gc.ca/hungary-hongrie/bilateral_relations_bilaterales/fs_
hungary-hongrie_fd.aspx?lang=eng (viewed 12 July 2013).
55 Bruce Campion-Smith, ‘Canada–Europe trade deal risks derailment over visa spat’,
Toronto Star, 26 April 2012. See also Stuart Trew, ‘EU parliament debates visa threat to
Canada–EU free trade deal; situation of Roma ignored by EU Commission, Canadian
government’ (blog), 22 May 2012, available on the Council of Canadians website at
http://canadians.org/node/4450 (viewed 11 July 2013).
opinion, however, these would be rare and exceptional.’56 In effect, the

lead cases created a rationale for refusing Roma asylum-seekers that, from
1999 to 2005, led to the rejection and deportation of thousands of
Hungarian Roma refugee claimants (see Figure 2).57 In 2006 a panel of
three Federal Court judges found a ‘reasonable apprehension of bias’ in the
IRB lead case practice.58 More recently, the IRB introduced another method for
discouraging Roma claims; its issue paper of July 2009, entitled ‘Czech
Republic: Fact-Finding Mission Report on the Situation and Treatment of
Roma and Potential for Internal Relocation’, evaluated legislative and
institutional measures taken by the Czech government to ameliorate racism
in that country.59 Since mid-2009, this report has been used to refuse 90 per
cent of Czech Roma claims. The production and use of this report is
undergoing a Federal Court challenge regarding the provenance of its data.60
Immigration authorities now have two more legislative instruments
available that facilitate the refusal of Roma refugees, and a third measure
that can be used against refugee claimants. The first of these is the Balanced
Refugee Reform Act. Passed by parliament in 2010 and fully implemented in
July 2012, this law thoroughly reformed the refugee determination system.
Such a reform was deemed necessary because, in the eyes of CIC, ‘Canada’s
asylum system is broken … crippled by an ever-increasing number of new
unfounded claims’.61 The new law has several provisions that will make the
refugee process more problematic for Roma. It allows the minister to name
certain countries or regions as ‘designated countries’ ‘that do not normally
produce refugees, that have a robust human rights record and offer strong
state protection … to their citizens’.62 This provision expedites the processing
of claims from countries so ‘designated’. Hungary and the Czech Republic
were expected to be included on the Designated Country of Origin (DCO) list
56 Geza v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) (F.C.), 2004 FC 1039, [2005] 3
F.C.R. 3, 27 July 2004, available on the Federal Judicial Affairs Canada website at http://
reports.fja-cmf.gc.ca/eng/2005/2004fc1039.html (viewed 12 July 2013).
57 Lee, ‘Post-Communism Romani migration to Canada’.
58 Kozak v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) (F.C.A.), 2006 FCA 124,
[2006] 4 F.C.R. 377, 27 March 2006, available on the Federal Judicial Affairs Canada
website at http://reports.fja.gc.ca/eng/2006/2006fca124.html (viewed 12 July 2013).
59 IRB, ‘Country report: October to December 2009 and year to date 2009’; IRB, ‘Issue
Paper: “Czech Republic: Fact-finding mission report on the situation and treatment of
Roma and potential for internal relocation”, July 2009, available on the IRB website at
www.irb-cisr.gc.ca:8080/Publications/PubIP_DI.aspx?id=3896 (viewed 12 July 2013).
60 Gerald Kernerman, ‘Refugee interdiction before heaven’s gate’, Government and
Opposition, vol. 43, no. 2, 2008, 230–48; St Clair, ‘Roma migration’.
61 CIC, ‘Frequently asked questions: the refugee system. Balanced Refugee Reform’
(answer to the question ‘Why are these changes necessary?’), 30 March 2010, available
on the CIC website at http://web.archive.org/web/20100404043301/ http://www.cic.gc.
ca/english/information/faq/refugees/ref-reform-faq.asp#changes (viewed 16 October 2013).
62 CIC, ‘Backgrounder: proposed reforms to Canada’s asylum system’, 30 March 2010,
available on the CIC website at www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/backgroun-
ders/2010/2010-03-30.asp (viewed 15 July 2013).
of ‘safe countries’ supposedly free of human rights abuses against their ethnic
minorities and, on 15 December 2012, the government published a list that
included the two countries.63 Indeed, the DCO list is comprised entirely of
European countries and the United States. The designation negatively
impacts Roma refugee claimants from these countries since they are given a
shorter time span in which to prepare for their refugee hearing. It speeds up
the deportation process, and ensures that a refused claimant is removed from
the country before one year, giving him/her far fewer opportunities to appeal.
Finally, to facilitate failed claimants’ departures, there is a pilot programme
offering assisted travel to those failed claimants who volunteer for it. It is
evident that the law will be used to discourage would-be Hungarian, Czech,
Slovak or any other Roma refugees from applying for asylum in Canada.64
At the level of principle, refugee law reflects a fundamental shift in Canadian
refugee policy away from its original progressive humanitarianism and towards
conservative political pragmatism. Bill C-31, Protecting Canada’s Immigration
System Act, was introduced to parliament on 16 February 2012, once the
government led by Progressive Conservative Stephen Harper was in a majority
position and thus assured of the bill’s success. It amends the earlier law and
expedites deportations of refugee applicants from designated ‘safe’ countries.
Other provisions of the law include unchecked ministerial powers over refugee
status determination by identifying ‘irregular’ arrivals of refugees, fast-tracking
the information-gathering process in a way that effectively eliminates the time
required for an appeal, and prohibiting work permits for refugees. It is evident
that the two laws are used to discourage all asylum-seekers in Canada but, as
one legal expert has asserted, they are patently orientated against the Roma.65
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s anti-Roma rhetoric is undeniable. For
example, a CIC press release about his 9 October 2012 visit to Hungary to meet
with Hungarian Roma political leaders stated that the new law would help to
stop ‘the abuse of our system and generosity by bogus asylum claimants’.66
Kenney’s campaign to define the claims of Roma refugees as ‘unfounded’ has
successfully drawn attention to the theme in the media. On 29 October 2011, he
made an unexpected visit to Toronto’s Roma Community Centre to enquire
about the large number of claims being withdrawn by Roma.67 The irony of this
63 ‘Government notices, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Immigration and

Refugee Protection Act: order establishing quantitative thresholds for the Designation
of Countries of Origin’, Canada Gazette, vol. 146, no. 50, 15 December 2012, available on
the Canada Gazette website at www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2012/2012-12-15/html/notice-
avis-eng.html#d113 (viewed 15 July 2013).
64 St Clair, ‘Roma migration’.
65 Sharryn Aiken, personal communication, 2011.
66 CIC press release, ‘Minister Jason Kenney meets with Roma leaders in Hungary’,
9 October 2012, available on the CIC website at www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/
media/releases/2012/2012-10-09.asp (viewed 15 July 2013).
67 Roma Community Centre press release, ‘Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration Canada visits the Roma Community Centre in Toronto’, 30 October 2011.
meeting is inescapable. Since withdrawal rates are central to the calculations

that result in the Designated Countries of Origin list,68 the minister is able to
identify the refugees as the author of their own fate while he has set the
conditions for their repatriation. That is, voluntarily withdrawn claims are used
as evidence of the safety of the country of origin, and as denial of the
persecution from which Roma are fleeing.
The ministry has sought the assistance of scholars in their efforts. On
8 November 2012, the monitoring and analysis unit of the Refugee Affairs
Branch of CIC contacted the authors of this article to offer funding to
conduct ‘research to determine why refugee claimants of Roma ethnicity
have been withdrawing their asylum claim at the Immigration and Refugee
Board of Canada (IRB)’,69 presumably to confer academic legitimacy on
plans to expedite the removal of Roma claimants. The ministry has even
gone so far as to post billboards in Hungary discouraging the Roma from
leaving for Canada despite the fact that the most egregious forms of anti-
Roma racism show no sign of abating.70 This was most recently demon-
strated in statements about Roma, made by a founding member of
Hungary’s ruling political party Fidesz, that indicate his support not merely
of persecution but of genocide: ‘These animals shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
In no way. That needs to be solved—immediately and regardless of the
method.’71
The impact of Canadian refugee policy on Roma refugee claimants
The tables and figures in this section are based on data from the IRB’s
annual country reports, specifically and exclusively on those claims that
were adjudicated by the IRB. Table 1 and 2 provide data on the number of
68 ‘Government notices, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Immigration and

Refugee Protection Act: order establishing quantitative thresholds for the Designation
of Countries of Origin’. For an interpretation of the policy, see Edward C. Corrigan,
‘Understanding the new refugee determination system in Canada’, rabble.ca, 30 January
2013, available at http://rabble.ca/news/2013/01/understanding-new-refugee-determi
nation-system-canada (viewed 15 July 2013).
69 Michelle Wock-Min, email to Cynthia Levine-Rasky, 8 November 2012.
70 Nicholas Keung, ‘Roma refugees: Canadian billboards in Hungary warn of deporta-
tion’, Toronto Star, 25 January 2013. In a posting to the listserv CCRLIST@YorkU.ca from
Judy Young, ‘Failed Hungarian Roma claimants and their reception in Hungary’, 16
January 2013, Young provides a translation of the billboard: ‘Announcement by the
Canadian government: In order to avoid abuse, Canada’s refugee determination
system has changed. Those whose claims are unfounded are sent back home faster’.
71 Keno Verseck, ‘Hungary’s racism problem: Orbán friend says Roma “shouldn’t be
allowed to exist”’, Spiegel Online International, 11 January 2013, available at www.
spiegel.de/international/europe/hungarian-journalist-says-roma-should-not-be-allowed-
to-exist-a-876887.html (viewed 15 July 2013).
accepted, rejected and new referred claims.72 For Figures 1 and 2, acceptance
rates of refugee claims were calculated by dividing the number of accepted
claims (A) by the number of accepted claims plus rejected claims (R)
according to the formula A/(A + R) x 100. This calculation does not include
abandoned or withdrawn claims. It is safe to assume that the vast majority of
Hungarian and Czech refugee claimants are Roma.
The IRB maintains that they determine refugee applications on a case-by-
case basis, yet our calculations suggest that immigration and refugee policies
play a significant role in whether a Roma claim is accepted or rejected. At a
glance, Tables 1 and 2 provide us with numbers that illustrate the dramatic
oscillations in Roma refugee claims in Canada over the last sixteen years. A
pattern can be seen in each table: the number of referred claims rises
discernibly each time visa restrictions are lifted, drops sharply after they are
reintroduced, and rises again as soon as they are removed. Moreover, the
number of acceptances in each table reveals that it is only after a large influx
of claimants are accepted from each country—the Czech Republic in 1998 and
Hungary in 2000—that the IRB visa requirements are put in place and the
acceptance rate drops. As with the 1998 Czech visa and the 2001 Hungary
visa before it, the 2009 Czech visa was successful in limiting new referred
cases from that country although it did not discourage other EU Roma from
arriving and applying for refugee status in Canada. Visas should be
understood not as an effective long-term strategy to decrease Roma refugee
claims but as a temporary measure to stem the flow of unwanted applicants.
They certainly do nothing to affect the basis of the refugee claims, something
that would require the application of sustained pressure on EU governments
to implement their EU membership obligations, specifically Racial Equality
Directive 2000/43/EC (see note 76).
Just after the visa imposition in 1998, Czech Roma claimants already in
the system experienced a very high success rate—and most were accepted
as Convention refugees—followed by a dramatic decline in acceptances
(see Table 1). Acceptance rates for Hungarian Roma claimants similarly show
how an initial acceptance rate of 70 per cent in 1998 quickly plummeted to
16 per cent within three months after a negative decision in the Roma lead
case (see Figure 2).73 The success rate for Czech Roma went from 94 per cent
in 2008 to 0 per cent in the last quarter of 2009 (seen in Figure 1 as an overall
54 per cent average in 2009). The situation for 2009–10 shows the same
pattern for Czech and Hungarian Roma when the visa was quickly
reintroduced for Czechs but not for Hungarians. Together, the average 2010
and 2011 acceptance rates for Roma from the Czech Republic were
approximately 10 per cent, and this dropped even further in 2012 to 6 per
72 Referred claims are not to be confused with percentages shown in Figures 1 and 2; they
are given to provide context and to illustrate the significance of the number of
incoming claims affected by immigration policies.
73 St Clair, ‘Roma migration’.
cent. Hungarian claims have likewise been in decline since 2008 (63 per cent),
dropping most recently to 17 per cent. With the limitations that are now
imposed on refugee claimants from Designated Countries of Origin (as per
Bill C-31), we do not expect acceptance rates for either country to rise
significantly. Shortened preparation time and severely limited resources
ensure many Roma will not have sufficient evidence or representation to
present their cases adequately.
There are political underpinnings to the Canadian government’s strategies
that restrict acceptances of claimants severely. As referred to above, these are
related to EU membership status for Hungary and the Czech Republic, which
is conditional on improvements in their human rights records. This process,
known as ‘European conditionality’ or adoption of the ‘Copenhagen criteria’,
is imposed on newer, eastern member states that are required to inscribe
progressive standards for the protection of minorities like the Roma.74 For
example, Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU states: ‘Any
discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, color, ethnic or social
origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other
opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or
sexual orientation shall be prohibited.’75 Directive 2000/43/EC, also known as
the ‘Racial Equality Directive’, obliges member states to provide Roma with
non-discriminatory access to education, employment, vocational training,
healthcare, social protection and housing, and goes beyond anti-discrimination
provisions to require their enforcement.76 As a result of European condition-
ality, the treatment of the Roma has become the crucible for new and hopeful
members to the European polity, as well as the ‘single most important catalyst
for changes in individual government policies toward them’.77
Both Hungary and the Czech Republic eventually became full members of
the EU in 2004. One condition was the improvement of conditions for their
Roma populations.78 To demonstrate such an improvement in human rights,
both countries agreed to eliminate conditions that allow racist persecution,
but this has not taken place. Instead, indications of the opposite are cons-
picuous. The Anti-Discrimination Act in the Czech Republic, for example,
sustained an attempt by Czech President Václav Klaus to veto it. After a
74 Aidan McGarry, ‘The Roma voice in the European Union: between national belonging
and transnational identity’, Social Movement Studies, vol. 10, no. 3, 2011, 283–97 (287).
75 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2010/C 83/02), 30 March 2010, C83/
396, available on the European Commission website at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUr-
iServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:083:0389:0403:en:PDF (viewed 1 August 2013).
76 Council of Europe, Council Directive 2000/43/EC, 29 June 2000, available on the Eur-Lex
website at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32000L0043:
en:HTML (viewed 1 August 2013); see also European Commission, An EU Framework
for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020, 5 April 2011, available on the Eur-Lex
website at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52011DC0
173:en:NOT (viewed 1 August 2013).
77 Goldston, ‘Roma rights, Roma wrongs’.
78 Spirova and Budd, ‘The EU accession process and the Roma’.
Table 1 IRB numbers of Czech refugee claims
Referred Accepted Rejected
1996 166 12 3
1997 1,218 22 3
1998 183 739 80
1999 92 119 45
2000 62 77 17
2001 47 12 12
2002 30 7 14
2003 20 5 18
2004 17 8 24
2005 11 2 7
2006 0 2 6
2007 79 0 0
2008 859 84 5
2009 2,202 90 75
2010 58 24 274
2011 30 43 331
2012 46 25 385
These numbers are the total new referred, accepted and rejected claims as recorded by the IRB in their
annual country reports; referred numbers are not to be confused with the percentages shown in
Figure 1.
Figure 1 IRB acceptance rates and timeline for Czech refugee claims
100%
The Minister
90% Visa reinstated, says ‘bogus
1998 claims’
80%
2009 report on
70% the Roma in the
Czech Republic Visa reinstated,
60%
13 July 2009
50%
40% Visa lifted, 2005–6 negligible

1997 claims; 2007, zero
30% claims accepted or
National rejected
20% average
Czech Visa lifted,
10% acceptance November 2007
0%
96
97
98
99
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
19
19
19
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
Table 2 IRB numbers of Hungarian refugee claims
Referred Accepted Rejected
1996 64 0 19
1997 294 11 15
1998 977 153 64
1999 1,581 74 378
2000 1,936 334 789
2001 3,895 217 579
2002 1,180 248 820
2003 132 173 1,392
2004 162 65 399
2005 58 51 267
2006 48 67 41
2007 24 6 15
2008 288 22 13
2009 2,440 3 5
2010 2,300 22 72
2011 4,423 165 738
2012 1,882 448 2,151
These numbers are the total new referred, accepted and rejected claims as recorded by the IRB in
their annual country reports; referred numbers are not to be confused with the percentages shown
in Figure 2.
Figure 2 IRB acceptance rates and timeline for Hungarian refugee claims
100% National
Lead case decision, average
90% 21 January 1999 Hungarian
acceptance
80%
70%
60%
50%
40% Visa introduced,

2001
30%
20%
10%
Lead case appeal filed, 2000
Visa lifted, March 2008
0%
96
97
98
99
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
19
19
19
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
thirteen-month delay, the law finally passed but only after the European
Commission threatened the Czech government with a fine of tens of millions
of Czech crowns.79 In her analysis of the implementation of anti-discrimina-
tion laws in EU member states, Lilla Farkas notes widespread failure.80 This is
the case even in Hungary, whose initiatives are among the most progressive in
the EU and are certainly ahead of other central European countries like
Bulgaria and Romania, to which it can be compared.81 Indeed, the Racial
Equality Directive is characterized by a mismatch between provisions for the
protection of human rights, and their application by member states and
enforcement by the European Court of Justice.82
Once a country becomes an EU member, it is as though there is no further
incentive to improve conditions for its minorities. EU membership thus
facilitates a denial of the problem of racism against the Roma, a serious
outcome that converges with state-sponsored persecution and widespread
police inattention to violence against Roma as reported by numerous NGOs,
such as the European Roma Rights Centre,83 and Amnesty International.84
With regard to the restriction of their acceptance of Roma refugees, receiving
countries such as Canada, with whom the EU nations enjoy trade relations,
must collude with the denial of the actual conditions that exist for Roma as
well as the consensus that ‘adequate state protection of Roma’ exists, as the
IRB judges in the Kozak and Smajda lead case of 1998–9 confirmed.85 Now
operating effectively to exclude the Roma, the refugee determination process
is based on the view that the conditions in the Czech Republic and Hungary
are improving and that states are protecting the Roma and are implementing
their Roma integration strategies, despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Is the government justified in its concern about unreasonable numbers of
Roma refugees arriving at its borders? How ‘irregular’ is this migration flow?
It is true that in 2011 Hungarian claims represented over 17 per cent of the
overall total referred claims that year. However, Hungarian and Czech claims
79 Milena Štráfeldová, ‘Czech Republic adopts Anti-Discrimination Act, avoids European

Commission sanctions’, Roma in the Czech Republic (online), 18 June 2009, available at
http://romove.radio.cz/en/clanek/22523 (viewed 1 August 2013).
80 Lilla Farkas, ‘Limited enforcement possibilities under European anti-discrimination
legislation: a case study of procedural novelties: actio popularis action in Hungary’,
Erasmus Law Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, 181–96.
81 Spirova and Budd, ‘The EU accession process and the Roma’.
82 Monika Ambrus, Marjolein Busstra and Kristin Henrard, ‘Racial Equality Directive and
effective protection against discrimination: mismatches between the substantive law
and its application’, Erasmus Law Review vol. 3, no. 3, 2010, 165–80.
83 European Roma Rights Centre, ‘Attacks against Roma in Hungary, the Czech Republic
and the Slovak Republic’.
84 Amnesty International, ‘International Roma Day highlights discrimination against
European Roma’, 5 April 2012, available on the Amnesty International website at www.
amnesty.org/en/news/international-roma-day-highlights-discrimination-against-european-
romani-2012-04-05 (viewed 1 August 2013).
85 See Geza v. Canada.
together represented less than 6 per cent of the total claims made between
2000 and 2012. At its peak, the IRB handled over 44,000 new claimant
applications in 2001 with an average of over 28,500 referred claims between
2000 and 2012. Yet, in 2010, there were only approximately 22,500 new claims;
in 2011 there were approximately 25,000 claims, and in 2012 a record low of
20,223. These numbers are significantly lower than the typical annual
average, yet Citizenship and Immigration Minister Kenney and media outlets
accuse Roma claimants of ‘swamping’ and ‘overwhelming’ the system,
despite the fact that the system is not being overwhelmed by the number
of claimants regardless of their source country.86 This trend raises questions
about the refugee determination process in which each case is to be heard on
an individual basis and judged accordingly. Instead of observing that the
overall average rate for Roma acceptances is on a par with the national
average for these years, we witness prolonged periods of extremely low
acceptance rates whose dips follow the implementation of policy instruments
(see Figures 1 and 2).
Does the exclusion of Roma in Canadian refugee policy qualify as

racism?
These multiple policy and legislative instruments function as a toolbox of

methods at the government’s disposal for the purposes of controlling the
access of Roma to Canada. An overview of immigration policy and Canadian
decisions over time reveals that the exercise of such instruments to control or
exclude ‘undesirable’ immigrants is not confined to the present moment.87
Exclusion of such immigrants has been an explicit policy in Canada from the
first Immigrant Act in 1869 up to the 1960s, and is recognizable as
institutional racism.88 From the 1850s to the 1880s, Chinese men were
recruited to work in the gold mines and railway construction. Despite their
essential contribution to the national economy, the British Columbian
government made several attempts to prohibit Chinese residents from
obtaining citizenship rights in the 1870s and 1880s. By 1903, the $500 head
tax on Chinese immigrants represented two years of wages.89 Chinese
immigration was restricted by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923. Japanese
86 Steven Chase and Tamara Baluja, ‘Tories introduce bill to thwart “bogus” refugees’,
Globe and Mail, 17 February 2012, A1.
87 See Sharryn J. Aiken, ‘From slavery to expulsion: racism, Canadian immigration law,
and the unfulfilled promise of modern constitutionalism’, in Vigay Agnew (ed.),
Interrogating Race and Racism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2007), 63–137; and
Anthony H. Richmond, ‘Refugees and racism in Canada’, Refuge, vol. 19, no. 6, 2001,
12–20.
88 Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy,
1540–1990 (Toronto: Dundurn Press 1997).
89 Augie Fleras, and Jean L. Elliott, Unequal Relations: An Introduction to Race and Ethnic
Dynamics in Canada, 5th edn (Toronto: Pearson Education Canada 2007), 241.
immigration was also strictly controlled. By 1928, admissions were curtailed

to 150 per year.90 During the Second World War, Japanese residents were
dispossessed of their homes, property, fishing boats and businesses, and
families were interned in rural encampments. Despite Prime Minister
Mackenzie King’s admission that no Japanese Canadians had committed
any acts of sabotage, they were encouraged to repatriate to Japan. Immig-
ration from India was banned from 1906 to 1947 even though Indians were,
like Canadians, British subjects. In 1914, after two months and much
lobbying by community members, the ship Komagatu Maru was refused
entry at a British Columbia port. The 376 Sikhs aboard were forced to return
to India. Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were shut out of Canada.
Jewish MPs and organizations repeatedly urged the government to admit
even small numbers of Jews, but all attempts failed. The government’s
refusal of Jews came to a head when in 1939 it refused entry to the ship
St Louis carrying over 900 European Jewish refugees. Cuba, the United
States and several South American countries had turned the ship and the
refugees away; Canada was their last attempt at asylum. However, ‘the PM
of Canada was obsessed with the notion that the admission of Jewish
refugees might destroy his country.’91
Policy measures against some groups of immigrants and refugees continue
in the present. After the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the Canadian
government passed the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Immigration and Refugee
Protection Act (IRPA) in tandem with the Patriot Act in the United States.
These laws reflect a preoccupation with national security, criminality and
terrorism.92 The IRPA, for example, features nine categories of inadmissibility
for which evidence may only be reasonable ‘grounds to believe’ that offences
‘have occurred, are occurring or may occur’ some day in the future.93 The
laws’ emphasis on security has had grave consequences for Muslim groups
even though IRPA was inspired by suspicions about another group of
refugees arriving at Canadian borders.94 In the summer of 1999, four
boatloads of 599 Chinese migrants were smuggled or trafficked into Canada.
Seen as a ‘threat to law and order and an insult to the integrity of Canadian
90 John Boyko, Last Steps to Freedom: The Evolution of Canadian Racism (Winnipeg: Watson
and Dwyer Publishing 1995), 124.
91 Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe,
1933–1948 (Toronto: Key Porter Books 1983), 17.
92 Aiken, ‘From slavery to expulsion’.
93 Cited in Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), Anti-Terrorism Act Review: Brief to the
House of Commons Subcommittee on Public Safety and National Security of the Standing
Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, 8
September 2005, available on the CCR website at http://ccrweb.ca/ATAcomments.pdf
(viewed 1 August 2013).
94 Denise Helly, ‘Are Muslims discriminated against in Canada since September 2001?’,
Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 2004; Sherene H. Razack, Casting Out: The
Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press 2008).
citizenship’, public hostility against the migrants led the government to detain
them for eight months and to deport all but a very small number.95 In the last
ten years, numerous individuals were held under IRPA security certificates, a
mechanism enabling the detention and deportation of non-citizens living in
Canada who are suspected of threatening national security. Defendants’
rights to a trial and to the disclosure of evidence against them are prohibited,
and individuals may be held for several years without any criminal charges
being laid. Security certificates parallel the other effects of IRPA in their
targetting of refugees and even naturalized citizens of Arab and Muslim
descent.96
In the global north, reactions to asylum-seekers like the Roma include fears
about their threat to security in work, public safety and social entitlements,97
fears of ‘lost differentiation, permeated boundaries’,98 and fears of literal
contamination with dirt and defilement.99 David Sibley explains that lines of
exclusion are drawn around outsider groups such as the Roma, a process that
includes stereotyping, racialization and representations of the abject.100 While
these fears of asylum-seekers are evident in Canada, they correspond to
changing ideological regimes and institutional practices. Among these are the
legal and bureaucratic measures to control the numbers and sorts of asylum-
seekers that we have seen. The legitimacy of these measures is negotiated
through a particular language of difference. This language is that of the ‘new
racism’. According to critical race theorists like David Theo Goldberg and Ali
Rattansi,101 the new racism operates mimetically by insinuating itself into
more acceptable cultural forms.102 Racialized language is replaced by the
safer lexicon of culture. A group’s culture is regarded as problematic because
of objectionable differences in practices, beliefs, rituals, values or lifestyle. In
95 Alan B. Simmons, Immigration and Canada: Global and Transnational Perspectives

(Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press 2010), 48.
96 Janet Dench, ‘Presentation on consequences on citizenship, immigration and refugee
policies in Canada’, presented at the Forum of the International Civil Liberties
Monitoring Group, ‘Anti-Terrorism and the Security Agenda: Impacts on Rights,
Freedoms and Democracy’, 17 February 2004, available on the Canadian Council for
Refugees website at http://ccrweb.ca/ICLMGforum.html (viewed 1 August 2013).
97 Steve Garner, Whiteness: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge 2007).
98 Gargi Bhattacharyya, John Gabriel and Stephen Small, Race and Power: Global Racism
in the Twenty-first Century (London and New York: Routledge 2002), 124.
99 David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West (London and
New York: Routledge 1995).
100 David Sibley, ‘Outsiders in society and space’, in Kay Anderson and Fay Gale (eds),
Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography (New York: Wiley 1992), 113.
101 David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Oxford and
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell 1993); Ali Rattansi, ‘Just framing: ethnicities and racisms
in a “postmodern” framework’, in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman (eds), Social
Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995),
250–86.
102 Goldberg, Racist Culture, 108.
the case of the Roma asylum-seeker, race appears to drop out of the frame.
Nowhere in mainstream venues are the Roma referred to as a racialized
group. However, negative, fixed and essentialized characteristics are ascribed
to them in such a way that their alleged cultural difference does the same
work as racialization: it excludes on the basis of a fundamental difference the
nature of which is deemed to be inconsistent with Canadian norms. As with
institutional racism, the new racism operates indirectly and without deliber-
ate intent.
In Europe, the criminality and inferior intelligence that are seen as parts of
the fundamental nature of the Roma are conspicuous signs of their
racialization. These characterizations are used to justify their exclusion from
the economy, housing, education, healthcare and more, while everyday
violence against them is either not fought effectively or is condoned by the
state. In Canada, we may discern official barriers to their entry, including the
denial of their persecution in Europe, but these practices carefully avoid
reference to the European Roma profile. An official multiculturalism and a
national identity bound to the idea of ‘a culture of immigrants’ mitigates the
worst effects of racism. However, contemporary racism persists precisely due
to its transformation into a socially acceptable discourse. Immigration law
and policy ensure exclusion without evoking the language of race.103 Indeed,
the articulation of race would undermine the exclusionary effects that are
better accomplished through discrete, ideological and discursive means. The
new racism shifts meanings of race away from physical and essential qualities
or pure origins to imputed cultural difference.104 Groups are defined as
outsiders on the basis of meaningful differences in beliefs, practices or values.
An invariable propensity to steal, or to live in abject poverty, or to be
nomadic, for example, is equated with Roma nature rather than attributed to
their persistent exclusion from society. Racialization is sustained in this way
through its production of intrinsic difference operating as a predictor of
inferiority.105
A state draws from a ‘multiplication of sites for the operation of racisms,
power-knowledge, professional ideologies such as color-blindness, equal
opportunity, spatial segregation of groups’.106 Policy is one such site. In
Canadian refugee policy, the new racism is arguably observed in policy
language evoking ‘queue jumping’, ‘irregularity’, ‘migrant’, ‘designated
103 Richmond, ‘Refugees and racism in Canada’; Eve Haque, ‘Language as symbolic
domination within immigration policy’, in Rose Baaba Folson (ed.), Calculated
Kindness: Global Restructuring, Immigration and Settlement in Canada (Halifax, NS:
Fernwood Publishing 2004), 61–70.
104 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, ‘“New racism”, color-blind racism, and the future of whiteness
in America’, in Ashley ‘Woody’ Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (eds), White Out:
The Continuing Significance of Race (London and New York: Routledge 2003), 271–84.
105 Miles and Brown, Racism.
106 Rattansi, ‘Just framing’, 262.
countries’ and ‘integrity of the asylum program’. The power of the new
racism is conferred through this coded language consistent with social
norms.107 Law and policy thus enable the control of immigrant groups while
legitimizing the ways in which ‘undesirable’ groups of refugees conflict with
a nation’s dominant values.108 The liberal concepts of pluralism, diversity and
inclusion accompany Canada’s policy of multiculturalism, but they coexist
with and are dependent on the management of difference.109
Reckoning the stakes
In Europe, Roma are being targeted directly by neo-Nazi groups, and

indirectly by the failure of governments to protect them and integrate them
in accordance with EU policy. In their attempt to find a more accepting
environment, Roma claimants apply for fair consideration as Convention
refugees in Canada, an entitlement that has caused administrative concern.
Governmental scrutiny has been deliberately adjusted to this relatively new
refugee population. Multiple barriers now exist that conflict with policy
operating for other refugee groups, such as Government Sponsored Refugees,
or with the principle of humanitarianism that has guided Canadian
immigration policy in the past. We have reviewed legal and political
manoeuvres like fluctuating visa restrictions, lead cases, new refugee and
immigration laws and related policy mechanisms. We have shown how
acceptance rates for Roma are affected by external political pressures. The
systematic way in which the Roma are excluded from Canadian society is
reminiscent of the historical treatment of other groups, all targets of
institutional racism. In identifying racism by its transformation into accept-
able cultural forms, the new racism reveals how refugee policy and law are
racist in effect while evading the language of race. As a result, we observe a
coolly effective exclusionary apparatus for processing refugee claimants
based on who among them resembles the ideal prospective Canadian citizen.
More problematic than the substantive content of law and policy is the power
deployed by the state to define, interpret, screen, adjudicate and mete out
decisions that affect the lives of people for whom everything is at stake. The
state protects its stake by managing a safe administrative discourse devoid of
social specificity. Instead, its interest is ‘to protect the integrity of the asylum
program’, as we have seen. The Roma become the casualties of this integrity.
107 Howard Winant, ‘The theoretical status of the concept of race’, in Les Back and John
Solomos (eds), Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader (London and New York:
Routledge 2000), 181–90.
108 Aiken, ‘From slavery to expulsion’.
109 Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2002); Himani Bannerji, The Dark Side of the
Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender (Toronto: Canadian
Scholars’ Press 2000).
Addendum
Release of the latest figures from Canada’s IRB allows us to ascertain the
impact of the reworking of the refugee system in 2012. In a summary sent to
members of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) email list, Janet Dench
notes that ‘the first half of 2013 shows a depressingly low acceptance rate:
33% nationally. This is the lowest acceptance rate in the history of the IRB
(i.e. since 1989).’ At the current rate, CCR expects the final number for all
refugee claims in 2013 to be under 10,000. This is in stark contrast with past
practice in which Canada accepted around 25,000 refugees annually, and
never fewer than 20,000. In 2013, claims by Hungarians have fallen rapidly.
While the acceptance rate for January to June 2013 was 21.5 per cent and the
success rate 15.5 per cent, both up from 2012, the actual number of referred
claims has diminished dramatically from 4,423 for all of 2011 and 1,882 for all
of 2012 to 104 for the first half of 2013. Furthermore, on the list of source
countries of refugees, Hungary fell from its position as no. 1 in 2010–12 to no.
13 in 2013.110
Cynthia Levine-Rasky is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology

at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. She teaches courses on racialization
and on research methodology. Her recent book Whiteness Fractured (Ashgate
2013) explores the intersections among whiteness, class and ethnicity, and
whiteness as a psychosocial phenomenon. She has published in journals such
as Race Ethnicity and Education, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Canadian
Ethnic Studies and Social Identities. Recently her research interests have turned
to the experiences of the diverse Romani community in the Toronto area. An
ethnographic study is underway, and a book tentatively entitled ‘Writing the
Roma’ is in preparation for Fernwood Publishing. Email: clr@queensu.ca.
Julianna Beaudoin is a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department at

the University of Western Ontario and a member of the Collaborative
Graduate Program for Migration and Ethnic Relations. She has an interdis-
ciplinary background that includes degrees in anthropology and international
studies. She first started researching discrimination against Roma in Finland
in 2002. Her PhD builds on earlier work that explored the impacts of
discrimination on Romani refugees and Romani communities in Toronto. She
has been involved with the Roma Community Centre since 2007 and has
contributed to the success of some community projects. She is currently
writing her dissertation, which examines historical Canadian-Romani con-
texts, media representations of ‘Gypsy’ stereotypes and Roma advocacy and
activism projects. Email: julianna.beaudoin@gmail.com.
110 Janet Dench, ‘IRB statistics, January to June 2013’, email to members of the listserv
CCRLIST@YorkU.ca, 4 September 2013. The original IRB document, ‘Country report:
April to June 2013 and year to date 2013’, was obtained from the IRB.
Paul St Clair was Executive Director of the Roma Community Center in

Toronto from 1998 to 2010, and is now an Immigration and Settlement
Counselor at CultureLink where he specializes in assisting Romani refugees.
He has been a pro bono counsel at refugee hearings of numerous Roma claims
at the Immigration and Refugee Board from 1998 to 2011. Former President of
the Board of Directors for Sojourn House, a Toronto refugee shelter, he has
since 2007 been the chair of the Toronto Refugee Affairs Council, a Toronto
organization assisting refugees in detention, and is a commissioner of oaths
for Ontario. He arrived in Canada in 1968 as a refugee from Czechoslovakia.
He received a PhD in Sociology of Education from OISE/University of
Toronto in 1982. Email: p_stclair@yahoo.com.

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The exclusion of Roma claimants in Canadian

Cynthia Levine-Rasky, Julianna Beaudoin & Paul St Clair

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The exclusion of Roma claimants in Canadian

CYNTHIA LEVINE-RASKY, JULIANNA BEAUDOIN AND

ABSTRACT The arrival of thousands of European Roma seeking refugee status in

KEYWORDS acceptance rates, asylum-seekers, Canada, Convention refugee, Immigrant

The treatment of Roma in Europe

Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown define racialization as the process by

Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Macedonia, Northern

Roma refugees in Canada and Canadian refugee policy

No historically accurate information on the numbers of Roma immigrants to

the 1967 Protocol on the Status of Refugees, defines a refugee (known as a

Despite the authority of these documents, they do not govern signatory

generally paid sufficient attention to UN standards in determining

opinion, however, these would be rare and exceptional.’56 In effect, the

63 ‘Government notices, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Immigration and

meeting is inescapable. Since withdrawal rates are central to the calculations

The impact of Canadian refugee policy on Roma refugee claimants

68 ‘Government notices, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Immigration and

Table 1 IRB numbers of Czech refugee claims

Referred Accepted Rejected

40% Visa lifted, 2005–6 negligible

Table 2 IRB numbers of Hungarian refugee claims

Referred Accepted Rejected

40% Visa introduced,

79 Milena Štráfeldová, ‘Czech Republic adopts Anti-Discrimination Act, avoids European

Does the exclusion of Roma in Canadian refugee policy qualify as

These multiple policy and legislative instruments function as a toolbox of

immigration was also strictly controlled. By 1928, admissions were curtailed

95 Alan B. Simmons, Immigration and Canada: Global and Transnational Perspectives

Reckoning the stakes

In Europe, Roma are being targeted directly by neo-Nazi groups, and

Cynthia Levine-Rasky is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology

Julianna Beaudoin is a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department at

Paul St Clair was Executive Director of the Roma Community Center in

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