Since the Vietnam War, Canada has been the primary destination of military men and women leaving their posts in the U.S. armed forces for personal, financial, or political reasons. However, Canada's historic and controversial role as a haven for American deserters political and non-political may be coming to an end with an unsympathetic government in charge, according to Newsweek.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States was involved in a bloody conflict in Vietnam, pouring in thousands of American soldiers to prop up the unstable government in Saigon against the stronger and more popular Communists of North Vietnam. Popular sentiments stateside escalated and the introduction of a military draft only further discredited the war effort and pushed as many as 50,000 people to head north of the border and evade service.
Then, as now, the Canadian people expressed support for these pseudo-refugees, and Toronto - their prime destination and focus of settlement - has been dubbed "Resisterville." When the war in Iraq began in 2003, a fresh wave of Americans and their families cried "Resisterville or Bust" and packed their cars for Canada. The American expats' enclave in Toronto's Parkdale neighborhood welcomed the new arrivals and posters and billboards expressing support and sympathy for the deserters continue to hang throughout the area.
It is primarily these newer deserters that are struggling to gain asylum and residence status from the Canadian government, but it has been an uphill battle. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been pushing deportations, waging a battle with more sympathetic lawmakers in Parliament who mustered a nonbinding resolution to halt deportations. Harper's immigration minister Jason Kenney denounced the American resisters as "bogus refugee claimants" and multiple requests for asylum appeals have been sternly rejected.
Canadian lawyers and support groups such as the War Resisters Support Campaign now believe that the situation will not be resolved in the court system, according to Newsweek. They say it will be a matter for the U.S. government to decide on; President Obama is not expected to issue a pardon like that granted in 1977 by then-President Jimmy Carter, but his administration must decide what will be done to the deserters that have already returned.
The fates of the American war resisters on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border remain uncertain. Those still hunkered down in "Resisterville" will re-submit their pleas for asylum, backed by continuing support from the general Canadian population, and hope that they be allowed to remain in their new home. Some Vietnam War deserters have never returned to the United States despite Carter's amnesty, and carved out a life for themselves.
Even though the war in Iraq had only started in 2003 and there are less deserters from this conflict than from Vietnam, some of those that have sought refuge in Canada have already begun creating new lives for themselves, anxiously anticipating a resolution of their legal and political limbo. However, the Canadian government is adamant on giving them the boot, and no hero's welcome awaits them in the U.S. where military courts may be ready to hand out more sentences for desertion.
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