1,000 voices demanding justice

The refusal of his refugee claim came as a shock to Ahmed Mustapha.

"I didn't have any doubt that I was going to be accepted," said the 26-year-old Palestinian refugee. "Canada has a very good reputation in Palestine as a humanitarian country which accepts refugees."

Born and raised in a refugee camp in Lebanon, Mustapha came to Canada in 2001, only to be refused in 2003.

Last Saturday, Mustapha along with about 1,000 others took to the streets of Montreal to protest against what they perceive as an unjust immigration system.

"They're deporting people back to a military occupation," said Rabie Masri, head of the Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees, the group who organized the protest march.

According to Masri, more than 40 Palestinians share Mustapha's plight in Canada, while six others have received their deportation order and are now living underground in Montreal.

The Ayoub family, three Palestinian refugees nearing their 70s, have been holed up in a Notre-Dame-de-Grâce church for eight months now.

"We demand that they be allowed to stay here, that they be given their rights and that, for once in their lifetime, they be treated as human beings," said Masri, criticizing the Immigration and Refugee Board as a dysfunctional institution.

According to Masri, the current configuration of the IRB puts the fate of refugees in the hands of a single board member who often has little knowledge of the country where the refugees are being deported.

"We hope that Paul Martin's minority government will change that," he said.

The demonstration also commemorated the more than 800 Palestinian refugees slaughtered in 1982 by Lebanese Christian militiamen allied to Israel, at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon.

The protesters gathered on the corner of Atwater and Ste-Catherine and made their way along Ste-Catherine dancing, chanting and waving banners as Arabic music blasted from speakers mounted on top of a moving truck. The protest ended in front of the Guy-Favreau complex, outside the offices of Immigration and Citizenship Canada, where food was served.

But among the onlookers, some remained skeptical.

"I don't know why they are protesting," said Pedro Del Velasquez, of Côte-des-Neiges, who was on Ste-Catherine Street to have lunch. "If they were judged then they should leave."

"It's true that you have to help people but this is a bit exaggerated," said Jean Grézaud, who came to visit Montreal one week ago from France. "If you were in France, you would realize...that we are outnumbered by the immigrants. And it costs us a lot financially."

Nonsense, according to Masri.

"These are fear-mongering tactics used against the refugees," he said.

"For people to actually be able to reach the Canadian border to apply for refugee status is a very dangerous route that people have to take and very few can make it. But some people are making it here. They're persecuted, why deport them back?"

Mustapha, who has an engineering diploma but is not allowed to work as an engineer in Lebanon, has applied for residency based on humanitarian grounds.

However, this doesn't stop the deportation process and Mustapha lives in apprehension, dreading the moment he will receive his deportation order, he said.

"I like Montreal a lot. It's a nice place to live. I see people living their lives, doing what they want to do, choosing what they want to work, choosing what they want to live. I envy the Canadians and the Montrealers who have the liberty to choose and the self-determination that I don't have."