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Let Lennikov Stay

In this nation of second chances, he's earned one.

Rafe Mair 8 Jun 2009TheTyee.ca

Rafe Mair writes a Monday column for The Tyee. Read previous columns by Rafe Mair here. He also acts as a spokesperson for the Save Our Rivers Society.

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Mikhail Lennikov and his family. Photo by CBC.

In a province of wimps (and I'll explain that accusation further on), there is at least one non-wimp. He is Pastor Richard Hergesheimer of First Lutheran Church, who gave the Russian deportee Mikhail Lennikov sanctuary in his church.

The legal right of a church to provide sanctuary in cases like this is questionable but in admittedly limited research I could find no Canadian legal authority on the subject

I did, however, come across a review of a book called Sanctuary, Sovereignty, Sacrifice by Dr. R. Lippert of The University of Windsor with this quote from the University's review.

"Facing immediate deportation, a lone Guatemalan migrant entered sanctuary in a Montreal church in December 1983. Thus began the practice of sanctuary in Canada. By 2003, 36 incidents involving 261 migrants had occurred nationwide.

"[In] Sanctuary, Sovereignty, Sacrifice … Randy Lippert suggests that, far from being a coherent social movement, sanctuary practice is a localized and isolated phenomenon, and often not primarily religious in orientation. It is also remarkably successful -- in every documented incident, state authorities were kept at bay and providers avoided arrest. In most cases, migrants also ultimately received legal status."

Many of you will, at this moment, be well to take a nip of Grandma's brandy before continuing because Rafe the Bleeding Heart rides again.

The case for Lennikov's staying

The deportee, Mikhail Lennikov, has lived in Canada since 1997 and, by all accounts, has been a model resident. He and his wife recently attended the high school graduation of their son. Strangely, you might think, Lennikov's wife and son have been allowed to stay.

Lennikov's sin is that he served in the Soviet Union's secret service, the KGB, from 1982, when he graduated from university, until 1988. (This is the same KGB that was once headed by former president and now Prime Minister Putin, a man for whom we lay out the red carpet.)

There is no evidence that Lennikov committed any sort of crimes against humanity -- rather that he was a simple bureaucrat not a policy maker.

Canada's second chance tradition

I'm old enough -- easily, I might add -- to have witnessed several waves of immigration.

Every influx of people into Canada has included worrisome individuals. Two groups that have been hugely influential for good are, first, the Germans after World War II. Many of them were at least titular Nazis, having served, like it or not, in the Hitler Youth and the armed forces fighting for Hitler. In doing so, each of them swore personal fealty to Adolf Hitler. Many worked in government where membership in the party was mandatory. Many belonged to the viciously wicked SS. In fact, the Allied forces occupying Germany originally wanted to ban members of the Nazi Party from working in the new government but found that if they did that, there would be no good civil servants left.

In 1956, Canada took in tens of thousands of Hungarians, many of whom were criminals let loose by the Communist government after the Soviet Union had regained power so that they were free of them. Clearly many of the refugees had worked for the Communist Party and were party members. This influx of Hungarians has been hugely beneficial to this country.

We have in more recent years seen Indo-Canadians coming to Canada who were known to be active supporters for a free state called Khalistan and the violence they felt was necessary for them to achieve their goals. The contributions of their culture to the overall culture of Canada has been profound.

I will be misunderstood, I realize, and will be thought of as racist and anti this and anti that. Not so, I simply point out that Lennikov's past working record scarcely disqualifies him if one looks at the Canadian tradition in these matters.

Weigh the human harm

I have no doubt that Lennikov will, if deported, return to a difficult if not dangerous homeland. He will leave behind him a wife and teenage son who must fend for themselves. The community will be deprived of a good, hard-working man.

In short, Lennikov's record as a resident of this country is there for all to see. Why isn't that sufficient to allow him to stay in the country he loves with his wife and son?

Pastor Hergesheimer and his flock do have some backbone here in the Land Of Blah and I hope that pays off for the Lennikov family -- and thus for the community at large.

Land of wimps?

As I said at the outset, we're a province of wimps. That was demonstrated by the recent election demonstrated.

Where was the anger at the Campbell government for forcing BC Hydro to contract with private power companies for power they don't need, these contracts now at $31 billion and climbing?

Where was the swell of public anger at the Campbell government setting BC Hydro on a course to bankruptcy?

Where indeed is the outrage about the recent approval of the Glacier Howser project in the East Kootenays, which doesn't even put the rivers back into the river bed after their diversion but dumps them into a lake?

The NDP version of outrage came from Norm Macdonald, MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke, who suggests that since the projects are put in the hands of private companies like AXOR, questions need to be asked about motives when considering the studies they publish. He prattles on about a number of concerns with nary a word about how Hydro doesn't need the power nor the huge additional burden when it must give the developer, Axos, its share of the lolly to be added to the $31 Billion.

We are at least one half a province of wimps since half of us, who could have saved BC Hydro, didn't even get off our asses to vote the Campbell government out because they would rather see their environment and BC Hydro killed than vote NDP.

It will be like a four-year movie you can watch scene by scene that chronicles the death of our rivers and of BC Hydro. For those who voted Liberal or didn't vote at all, enjoy.

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