The Baseball Crisis - 2 Minute Read

Last week, we were all a little shocked to see that Ahmed Hussen personally intervened in a TRP case and issued the visa in six days under Humanitarian and Compassionate grounds. Certainly, everyone that has written a letter to the esteemed Minister or his boss will have received a template reply including the phase “the Minister does not personally intervene on individual cases.”

As I read the headlines, my mind automatically went to a very dark place. As Minister Hussen is intimately acquainted with Widlene’s case, he knows all of the dangers that she faces on a day to day basis. He has been made aware of the ethnic cleansing in DR and the personal death threats made against the Earle family. He was informed of the police officer trying to exploit Widlene for sex as well as the pedophile ring that nearly lured her and a number of her friends in.

With that in mind, I began to imagine the terrors that this boy must have been facing. If forced sexual exploitation didn’t make the cut for humanitarian and compassionate considerations, I didn’t want to know what depraved madness it took to get the minister to personally intervene in less than a week.

On the website for Immigration Canada, there are some examples of what might qualify for special considerations and I became intensely curious to find out which atrocity this was. Possibly fleeing from religious persecution? Maybe this child was abducted into forced labor. Could it have been the fallout from a natural disaster or maybe he had escaped from a child soldier camp.

Why was I surprised to discover that the special humanitarian and compassionate exemption was granted to this boy could play baseball?

Don’t get me wrong, I love baseball. And if I was as good as this 13 year old, I would have been pretty excited to play on the big stage too. This, however, seems to be a bit of a stretch to justify a special humanitarian visa. Or is it?

The kid has been in Canada since 2015 when he walked across the border and entered Canada illegally to be with his parents. His father, a drug dealer, did five years in a US prison and has a pretty impressive criminal record. The family has been in Canada for some time with no legal status. Their immigration file cannot be completed due to the criminal activity in the father’s past.

So… the recipient of the TRP was not fleeing persecution nor was he looking for entrance into Canada.

Here it comes….

He had already been living in Canada illegally. He needed the TRP so he could leave Canada and then return to continue living illegally. The letter of the law says that the family should be deported but I think we all know that isn’t going to happen. The law that he needed to circumvent, however, was the one that wouldn’t allow him back in Canada after leaving - a fairly reasonable law.

Enter Hussen.

In less than 6 days, Ahmed Hussen personally intervened (against his own policy) to give an illegal resident a permit to leave Canada to play baseball and return again to his illegal status. Did I mention that the kid was born in the US to Mexican parents?

I could even deal with all of that, but did he have to call his blatant favoritism and abuse of power humanitarian?

Widlene Earle has a legitimate constitutional claim to be in Canada and Hussen has broken the law to keep her out while breaking his own policy so that an illegal alien can play baseball. Widlene has faced nearly all of the examples that the government deems worthy of humanitarian and compassionate intervention (by the way, baseball wasn’t listed). She has repeatedly been passed over by Hussen and his staff even after promises were made to approve her.

I guess it is time for Widlene to learn to swing a bat.

I have nothing more to say.