Photo credit: Toronto Star
A man who is a Kenyan national and who claims to be bisexual is on the brink of being deported by the Canadian authorities because he has exhausted all the appeals of his refugee claim.
On July 26, the Toronto Star reported that Charles Mwamgi left Kenya so that he could feel freer to live as a bisexual. He had first worked in Afghanistan, where he worked as a contractor for the US military, before finding his way to Canada, where he claimed asylum in 2019.
The Toronto personal support worker said he would rather remain undocumented in Canada than return to Kenya, where he faced a death sentence.
He said, “It’s hard and stressful without status because you don’t know what’s going to happen to you the next day. I just want to live a normal life without fear.”
His claim had been refused in 2021 based on credibility because he had been married to a woman with whom he had three children. Mwangi decided to publicly reveal his own case, both as a bisexual man and undocumented migrant, by joining a Toronto news conference to call on the Canadian government to deliver the regularization plan that was promised to non-status residents who live in the shadows in Canada and grant them permanent residence in Canada.
Swathi Sekhar of Rainbow Railroad, a global not-for-profit that helps at-risk LGBTQ people get to safety worldwide, said LGBTQ migrants are particularly vulnerable among the undocumented population.
According to her, they often face challenges in obtaining evidence to prove their identification in their asylum claims or accessing critical support services in housing, health care and employment due to social stigma.
Sekhar, whose group has been working with the Canadian government to resettle at-risk LGBTQ people abroad to Canada also said, “They also uniquely have an inability to access traditional support systems as family or communities…where they end up facing homophobia and transphobia.
“In our view, the government’s commitment to supporting LGBTQ+ rights also includes following through on their 2021 promise to implement a widespread regularization scheme for undocumented migrants in Canada.”
A lesbian from Colombia, Mayte Puerta, said she can’t afford to get sick because she can’t go to a hospital and is exposed to exploitation by employers because she doesn’t have status and a voice in Canada.
Puerta said, “We are invisible in the society.” She came to Canada eight years ago and, like many non-status migrants, does cash jobs and works as a cleaner to support herself.
