Statement from the WE ARE JOSE CAMPAIGN launched January 16, 2011 Today, We Are Jose. José Figueroa could be any one of us. He has lived happily in his Langley, BC, community, just outside Vancouver, for over 13 years with his wife, Ivannia, and three Canadian children. As they built new lives after fleeing danger in El Salvador, they worked hard and became leading members of their local Lutheran church. Then, out of the blue, last May, 2010, José and his wife were told they were no longer welcome in Canada and were going to be deported. The reason? As a university student more than 20 years ago, José was a member of a student group associated with the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation, or FMLN, the broad coalition of opposition forces fighting the ruthless Salvadorean government of the time. Indeed, supporting the FMLN was the conscious and courageous choice of countless Salvadoreans trying to free themselves from the tyranny of a Salvadorean state that targeted with impunity priests, nuns, farmers, teachers, workers, professors, students, indeed, anyone opposed to its systematic human rights violations. And the international community recognized Salvadoreans’ right to defend themselves against oppression. The FMLN was widely acknowledged as a legitimate and representative opposition organization and as a vital element to bringing democracy to El Salvador. After signing UN-sponsored peace accords with the Salvadorean government 19 years ago (peace accords that Canada explicitly supported), the FMLN went on to become a leading political party and won the presidency in El Salvador in 2009. The Canadian government recognized that election as free and fair and even sent a representative, then Minister of State of Foreign Affairs for the Americas and now Minister of the Environment, Peter Kent, to President Mauricio Funes’ inauguration. Still, Canadian border and immigration authorities consider José a threat to Canadian security because of his links to the current democratically elected and internationally recognized governing party of El Salvador, the FMLN. And this is not a case of a single immigration officer making a bad decision. Instead, we have a number of cases where members of the FMLN are referred to "admissibility hearings" based solely on their membership in the FMLN. Cases like that of Jose Figueroa, where the immigration court determines that he has not committed any criminal act but but he must be denied simply because he was a member of the FMLN in the past. It simply doesn’t make sense and we simply want our government to realize as much. We believe that this has occurred to Jose and to other past members of the FMLN due to a mistaken understanding by the Canadian government to the past conflict in El Salvador and this mistake must be fixed immediately. José, Ivannia, and their three Canadian children are no threats to Canada. On the contrary, they are exctly the kind of people who have built this great country. Their fate lies in the hands of Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews. Supporters of the WE ARE JOSE campaign demand that Minister Toews immediately grant José Figueroa an exemption that declares him no threat to national security and that allows the Figueroa family to continue leading productive lives in Canada. We further demand that he ensure that the FMLN and its many supporters are no longer mischaracterized as threats by Canadian authorities.
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