MY 10 YEARS OLD CANADIAN BORN SON HAS ME

Fighting for reunion 
 
Photos contributed  
Short stays: (Top)?Arya Javdani and Saeed Javdani Tabrizi visited each other in Thailand approximately five years ago. (Above) Bonnie Ward spent several months in Iran with her husband Saeed nine years ago. 
By Martha Wickett 
OBSERVER STAFF 
Jun 27 2007 
Immigration: Local boy dreams of father coming to Canada.  
For Bonnie Ward, there’s nothing in the world she wants more than to see her son and his father reunited.  
She has worked towards that goal for years, so far an unsuccessful effort that has left her drained and disillusioned. She feels her family has been victimized indirectly by the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York.  
“If you could see the pain and hurt in his face when he sees other dads and sons together,” Ward says of her son Arya Javdani, who’s now eight. “He has missed out on that.”  
Ward, who grew up in Salmon Arm, met Saeed Javdani Tabrizi in 1995 in Vancouver..  
He was from Iran. He had come to Canada in 1992.  
“His dream, like many young men in the Middle East, was to come to the land of milk and honey – the land of money and cars and beautiful women,” says Ward.  
However, in order to stay in Canada, he made an illegal claim to immigration – he claimed refugee status.  
Like most young men in Iran, he had served mandatory time in the military. However, Ward says, as a basis for his refugee claim, he said he had taught martial arts to the secret police.  
“The story incriminated him and it destroyed his life,” she says.  
But, back to 1995.  
Ward and Tabrizi fell in love. On July 19, 1996, they were married. They applied for spousal sponsorship for citizenship. Twice they were given appointments for interviews and, twice, the interviews were cancelled by the immigration office, once while they were sitting in the waiting room.  
On May 26, 1997, at 8:30 a.m., officers came to the couple’s door. They asked only two questions, Ward says - Are you married? and How long have you been married?  
They then took Tabrizi away in handcuffs and he was deported to Iran.  
Because the couple wanted to be together, Ward decided to visit him in Iran.  
“I went to meet his family - and I hadn’t seen him in six months.”  
First, however, she needed to be married under Iranian law. She went to a notary public in Vancouver, where she had to have a male Iranian witness, and was married over the phone. Then, with a visitor’s visa, she went, donning the traditional clothing there. While there, she realized living in Iran would not be a viable option for her.  
When she came back to Canada, she was pregnant.  
Ward kept up her efforts to bring her husband back to Canada, with the help of Members of Parliament.  
In the fall of 2000, she hired a Vancouver lawyer to take her case. In June of 2001, a hearing was held – at a cost to her of $5,000 – but, because there was so much information, it was carried over into a second day.  
As luck - or lack of luck - would have it, she says, the second hearing was scheduled for Sept. 18, 2001, just one week after 9/11.  
Tabrizi’s lie came back to haunt him. Ward says that although he had admitted years previously that he had lied on his refugee claim – in truth he had not trained secret police and so was not a threat to Canada’s security – immigration officials turned down his appeals.  
“We tried to fight on humanitarian and compassionate grounds because of our son, but they didn’t care,” she says, adding that their life savings are gone and they have exhausted all avenues of money borrowing.  
The reasons for the decision by the appeal judge state that, although humanitarian and compassionate grounds were strong, no evidence had been supplied to show that Tabrizi had not participated in crimes against humanity.  
“...Without information to the contrary, leads me to conclude on a balance of probabilities that the applicant’s admission could potentially pose a risk to the Canadian public.”  
The judge added that a further negative factor in the case “is the ease with which the applicant is prepared to say whatever he believes would suit his purposes at any given time.”  
Ward believes her husband was being used as an example to others.  
“I believe in my heart we were just used as an easy case for them to use as a bad example,” she says, adding, “If you have lots of money, you can buy your way into the country – but nobody likes to say it.”  
Five years ago, her husband travelled to Thailand, where she and her son joined him for a short visit.  
“My son was sitting in his father’s lap, his eyes were big as saucers. He kept looking at me and looking at his dad - he was so happy.”  
Although her husband used to phone to speak to his son every day, now he calls once a week, in order to save money for the time when and if he is allowed come to Canada.  
At this point, Ward has run out of options.  
“It is too emotionally devastating and too frustrating. I’ve changed a lot. I’ve lost my spark. It was an eye-opening experience - I have no respect for our immigration system or our government... If they ever provided evidence to show me this is what he’s done, it would have been a chance to move on and deal with it.”  
Her son Arya will likely never give up hope.  
“Now I’m approached almost weekly by him,” Ward says. “He says, ‘Mummy, if there’s one more thing you could do for me, could you let me see my daddy one more time.”  
 
 
 
 
Story: Fighting for reunion 
Published in: Salmon Arm Observer on Jun 27, 2007 
Story URL: 
http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals-code/list.cgi?cat=46&paper=29&id=1016484 
:cry :cry

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