Every Sunday Samuel Ndesanjo Nyaga brings the TTC to the Kenyan church near Davenport and Old Weston roads, where he helps set up chairs, greet parishioners and clean up.
The 74-year-old serves as a mentor, of some sort, to the children and youth who come to the service. Try to guide them to become “righteous” adults. He volunteers in the kitchen and serves snacks and coffee to the homeless.
However, what the Toronto man will rarely do is share with others details of his previous life as a banker and political activist for the poor of rural Kenya.
He also won’t talk about his immigration problems.
That is, until a couple of months ago.
It was then that, after 21 years in Canada, Nyaga, a failed asylum seeker, received a deportation date for the new year.
It is a moment that had been long in coming.
In fact, every month for more than a decade, Nyaga has communicated with the Canada Border Services Agency anticipating the day when he would finally have to leave the country.
Now, his time in Canada seems to have run out. And the news of his scheduled deportation is sending ripples to the Kenyan Canadian community in Greater Toronto.
Many of its members say they admire Nyaga as a leader, but until now were unaware of his immigration problems.
“I have nothing left in Kenya,” says Nyaga.
Nyaga says he spent decades at Barclays Bank of Kenya, first as an employee and finally as an executive. It was a career he would leave behind when he joined the country’s opposition Democratic Party in the early 1990s, as the country slowly moved away from being a one-party state. There, he began advocating for access to water and electricity for the poor in rural Kenya.
He claims that he was threatened and persecuted by the government for his defense work. In 2000, he came to Canada seeking political asylum. Since then he has not left the country.
It took three years for his refugee case to be heard. His application was rejected in September 2003 because he was unable to provide a Democratic Party membership card and the refugee judge did not believe that he belonged to the opposition movement. An appeal from the Federal Court the same year failed.
It took another four years before Canadian border agents began an evaluation process to ensure that the Toronto man’s life would not be at risk if he was deported to Kenya. Another three years passed and he determined that he would be safe to return home.
For nearly 12 years, since 2010, on the first Monday of every month, Nyaga reported to the border agency office on Airport Road, rain or shine, to prove that he had not disappeared and that he would still be presented for eventual removal from Canada. . . Since the pandemic began, that monthly visit has become a phone call record.
Then, in November, his deportation was formally scheduled on January 4.
“I have nothing to go back to,” says Nyaga, who has a separated wife and five adult children whom he says he has not communicated with in all these years.
“I have nowhere to go. All I ask is, ‘Please allow me to spend my remaining years in Canada.’
These days, wherever Nyaga goes, his 85-year-old roommate, Josiah Kamano Gashoka, tends to accompany him.
The two met years ago as neighbors in Scarborough and became friends. When Gashoka suffered a heart attack in 2013 and later developed dementia, Nyaga invited him to move in with him.
Nyaga will make breakfast, often just bread and coffee, and will make Gashoka’s favorite Kenyan porridge (millet and sugar) and Chicken Masala with black beans and rice for lunch or dinner.
You will accompany your roommate to local parks, medical appointments, and banks. Sometimes, he takes Gashoka to the bank several times a day because, for some reason, the old man is fascinated with them.
For years, Nyaga worked as a security guard and janitor at a condo building on Marine Parade Drive by the lake, until 2016, when his work permit expired. Since then, he has lived off his meager income from the Canada Pension Plan and the Ontario Disability Support Program, both of which will likely end with his departure.
Nyaga’s attorney, Ariel Hollander, says his client is well established in Canada and would face tremendous difficulties if transferred to Kenya. An application was made to defer deportation, but the border agency recently rejected it.
Border officials note that Nyaga has been aware of his “imminent removal” since 2010 and the only impediment to his removal has been the lack of a travel document.
“It should be understood that this is an unfortunate but inherent result of the removal process and does not constitute an unusual or disproportionate hardship for him,” he said in a letter.
“Considering all of the above, those factors alone are not sufficient to justify a postponement of removal from Canada.”
Refuting Nyaga’s need to care for her roommate with dementia, the agency said there is insufficient evidence that a personal support worker cannot help Gashoka.
“Gashoka has status in Canada and is eligible for all medical and social benefits available to all Canadians. While I acknowledge that (he) will need an adjustment period, the attorney presented insufficient evidence to justify a deferral of removal on that basis, ”the border agency said.
Friends say Nyaga should be allowed to stay, as the agency has waited until his senior year to send him back to Kenya and start his life anew.
“Deporting him to Kenya is like throwing him into the grave,” says Jane Njambi, who has known Nyaga for many years through the Kenya Global Church in Toronto, but recently learned of his immigration story after a distraught Nyaga ask for help, apparently outside. of despair.
“He is homeless in Kenya and he will end up homeless on the street. They have no social security at home. How will you survive? “
Members of the Kenyan Canadian community in the greater Toronto area say that Nyaga is highly regarded.
“He is an elder in our community and people come to him for advice,” says Charles Thuku of the Nyumba Community Association, whose members are all from the Mount Kenya region, where Nyaga is also from.
“He is a generous volunteer. We offer grief support to people who lose family members at home. He is always the first person to help and provide financial support. “
The local community began raising money in October to hire a lawyer for Nyaga and launched a online petition urging the border agency to halt his deportation until a decision is made on his new application to remain in Canada on humanitarian grounds.
Although unsuccessful asylum seekers, as well as criminals, are supposed to be deported within one year of a negative final decision, a Report of the Auditor General of Canada last year it found that the Canada Border Services Agency has failed to remove people in a timely manner.
“Despite a recent spike in removals, around 50,000 executable cases continued to accumulate in the agency’s inventory. In two-thirds of these cases, the agency did not know the whereabouts of the people. Most of the accumulated cases had been enforceable for several years, ”said the audit.
Hollander, Nyaga’s lawyer, said the border agency only asked Nyaga to apply for a Kenyan passport in September after he had faced an “enforceable” removal order since 2010.
Nyaga said he tried online, but was unsuccessful because he did not have an address in Kenya. The border agency recently obtained an emergency travel document from their Kenyan counterparts to facilitate their removal.
“He had to report to CBSA for (almost) 12 years. It didn’t go anywhere. They knew exactly where he was and they just let him stay here, ”said Hollander, who is working on a motion to ask the Federal Court to stop Nyaga’s removal.
“They say their job is to make sure people without status don’t stay in Canada. They allowed someone over 10 years to stay here without status. It’s stupid, but they contributed to the situation we’re in. We have a man who is 75 years old and literally has no future to go home. “
Reference-www.thestar.com