 SRI LANKAN SEEKS REFUGE IN CANADA AFTER FOUR YEARS OF DETENTION IN THE US
Ponnampalam Kailasapillai thought that he would be in Washington, D.C. just long enough to change planes. More than four years later, he finally finished his journey from Sri Lanka to Canada. Kailasapillai fled Sri Lanka in September 1996 to avoid the ongoing ethnic conflict. He wanted to join his brother, who had already been granted asylum in Canada.
His plane landed at Dulles International Airport in Washington, and when US immigration officials determined that the passport he was carrying was not his own, he was detained. Kailasapillai was faced with the choice of deportation back to Sri Lanka or applying for asylum in the US. He sought asylum. He said that he was a farmer who had been persecuted by both sides in the conflict between government forces and the Tamil minority. While the approval rate of asylum claims from Sri Lankans is among the highest, the Immigration Judge who heard Kailasapillai’s case was one of the toughest. She found that the problems associated with living in a war zone do not constitute persecution. Later, the same Immigration Judge denied his application under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Last week he was finally released from detention with the INS saying that he could go free so long as he went immediately to Canada. Upon his arrival in Canada, Canadian immigration officials interviewed Kailasapillai. He contrasted the treatment he received in the US and in Canada, saying that after he explained that journalists accompanied him because of his 54 months of detention in the US, the process went smoothly.
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