14 Daiva Stasiulis
was transferred into Customs and Border Protection Agency custody in
Toronto’s Metro West Detention Centre pending removal in accordance with
the removal order. In April 2013, he was released from custody on certain
bonds and under strict conditions and surveillance. The government has been
unsuccessful in its attempt to deport him to India as Indian authorities have
found that he is not an Indian national and refused to issue him travel
documents.22 Stripped of his Canadian citizenship, Budlakoti has been “left in
a vulnerable position whereby his country of birth and residence has
withdrawn his citizenship, thereby rendering him stateless” (Hameed, 2013,
pp. 3-4).
Today, as a stateless person, Budlakoti’s life is full of hardship, mental
health issues, uncertainty, and crushing debt incurred from continuous
litigation. He has worked for wages intermittently, waiting in some cases six
months for work permits, and is ineligible for social assistance. His low
educational level, criminal record, statelessness and threat of deportation
have made it impossible for him to financially support himself. The
government’s insistence that Budlakoti fill out documents to apply for a work
permit confers foreignness upon him as only temporary foreign workers need
fill out such forms. Similarly, in 2012 Budlakoti’s transfer from the prison
where he was serving out his term to the West Detention Centre in Toronto,
where he was detained under immigration law, established his foreignness, as
such spaces are reserved for non-citizens. Just as citizenship is produced
through documental networks, providing access to publicly funded health
care, social services and basic democratic and legal rights, a reverse
documental and material network has been enrolled to translate an erasure of
Budlakoti’s legal and substantive citizenship.
A particularly harsh effect of the extinguishment of his citizenship has been
the cancellation of Budlakoti’s Ontario Health Insurance Program
entitlements, and given his impoverishment, his inability to purchase private
insurance. This withholding of public health care also reinforces his
production as a non-citizen, whereby he joins “the ranks of an estimated half
a million people in Canada [including the undocumented and new immigrants
in the first three months of arrival] without access to medical care because of
their immigration status” (Bozinoff, Goel, Jones, & Shahid, n.p., 2015).
Despite a medical diagnosis that he has PTSD, he is unable to access therapy
and health care more generally. In all realms of daily life where he has
encountered the impossibility of retaining relationships, supporting himself,
maintaining his health, etc., his experience reflects how an individual’s slide
22
As the Applicant’s Record argues in Deepan Budlakoti and Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration, “Significantly, the Indian government indicates that the Applicant is not an Indian
citizen, a fact which is undisputed by [the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.] A relevant
communication made by India to CBSA on March 18, 2013 regarding its position on the
Applicant’s nationality [never communicated to Budlakoti]…was later discovered by the
Applicant in September 2013 through a personal information request made by him under the
Privacy Act” (Hameed, 2013).
Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1-26, 2017
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