By Lloyd Mackey

THE TRADITION of church sanctuary could possibly be compromised in this country.

Some observers in Canada’s immigrant and refugee community are wondering whether a recent policy addition to the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) enforcement manual might lead to the violation of sanctuary for people like Mikhail Lennikov.

Concerns have been raised over a reference in the manual to the possibility that “forced entry” to a church might be required in cases that “pose a threat to the integrity of the immigration system.”

For almost a year, Lennikov has accepted sanctuary at First Lutheran Church, in East Vancouver. While he has been open about his background as a translator for the KGB,  it was that factor which caused the Canadian Immigration Service (CIS) to block his request for permanent residency.

He was ordered deported to Russia last June; his church provided sanctuary – under ancient customs still practiced in modern society. Lennikov is convinced that he and his family would be persecuted in the post-Soviet Russia, for his KGB connections.

His wife Irina and son Dmitri were permitted to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds. For that reason, two opposition MPs from the Vancouver area, Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh and NDPer Peter Julian, are campaigning to get the CIS decision reversed.

Peter Fischer, interim pastor at First Lutheran and the only person authorized to speak for either Lennikov or the church, declined comment on the issue.

BCCN interviewed three  academics who have experience dealing with sanctuary.

Peter Showler of the Refugee Forum at the University of Ottawa, having examined the policy addition, believes it will not make any difference for practical purposes. But he noted that churches take on a “real burden, when keeping someone in sanctuary.”

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Further, he suggested the CBSA generally  allows sanctuary to work a process of “attrition” – permitting negotiation and time to find alternatives to resolve a deportation issue one way or another.

And, said Showler, most Christian churches that practice sanctuary are both “disciplined” in maintaining a watch on the person and “acting in a Christian way.”

While the Lennikov situation involves a church helping one of its own members, there have been situations where Muslims and Sikhs took sanctuary in Christian churches. Sanctuary, he added, “involves a moral complexity. It is not simply a matter of protecting from persecution.”

Vern Neufeld Redekop, head of the conflict studies department at St. Paul University in Ottawa, pointed out that the “strict application of the law sometimes results in injustices being done.”

Thus, sanctuary or “the honouring of sacred space by the secular authority” is significant, “and should not be intruded on.”

While he had not looked closely at the addition to the CBSA manual, he said he would not be happy if serious consideration was given to “violating sanctuary” for modest reasons.

“There needs to be some way to buy time,” he said, allowing that there remains the need for vigilance “if there is evidence [of] a threat to Canadians.”

Conflict studies specialist Arthur Boers, of Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto, allowed that “not all refugees are pretty. Some churches, in the 80s, were harbouring people who had committed atrocities in their former countries.

“For me, one of the challenges for Christians is how we regard offenders – how we show love and forgiveness, while upholding the law.”

May 2010