http://www.frumforum.com/we-used-to-embrace-defecting-kgb-agents-now-we-deport-them Building a conservatism that can win again Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:50:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.frumforum.com/we-used-to-embrace-defecting-kgb-agents-now-we-deport-them/comment-page-1#comment-42378 chephren Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:20:53 +0000 #comment-42378 Send Lennikov back where he came from, please.<br><br>The title of this piece is telling - and completely wrong-headed. Why should we "embrace" this man, just because he was once a KGB agent? This is nostalgia, not an assessment of the case on its merits. Lennikov is not Igor Gouzenko. He is not "defecting". <br><br>By his own account, Lennikov left the KGB in 1988 and stayed on in Russia unmolested until 1995. He overstayed his Canadian student visa years ago, gambling that the Canadian immigration system, which gives refugee claimants almost limitless opportunities to work and endless avenues of appeal, would give him a pass. All appeals have now failed. <br><br>The story Lennikov tells to justify the granting of Canadian residency is weak and contradictory. He insists that he was not a big fish, merely a low-level translator and sometime spy who left the KGB in 1988, then stayed on in Russia unmolested for several years afterward. Yet he claims that he will face harrassment, imprisonment and worse if he is sent back. If his KGB career was so inconsequential, why does he claim to be at such great risk in Russia? <br><br>There may be aspects of this case unknown to the public. Lennikov may well have a CSIS file that shows him to be undesirable in Canada - or not. We will probably never know. Whatever facts the government based its case on, Lennikov has failed every appeal. He is subject to the law as all Canadian refugee claimants are. Send him back. Send Lennikov back where he came from, please.The title of this piece is telling – and completely wrong-headed. Why should we “embrace” this man, just because he was once a KGB agent? This is nostalgia, not an assessment of the case on its merits. Lennikov is not Igor Gouzenko. He is not “defecting”. By his own account, Lennikov left the KGB in 1988 and stayed on in Russia unmolested until 1995. He overstayed his Canadian student visa years ago, gambling that the Canadian immigration system, which gives refugee claimants almost limitless opportunities to work and endless avenues of appeal, would give him a pass. All appeals have now failed. The story Lennikov tells to justify the granting of Canadian residency is weak and contradictory. He insists that he was not a big fish, merely a low-level translator and sometime spy who left the KGB in 1988, then stayed on in Russia unmolested for several years afterward. Yet he claims that he will face harrassment, imprisonment and worse if he is sent back. If his KGB career was so inconsequential, why does he claim to be at such great risk in Russia? There may be aspects of this case unknown to the public. Lennikov may well have a CSIS file that shows him to be undesirable in Canada – or not. We will probably never know. Whatever facts the government based its case on, Lennikov has failed every appeal. He is subject to the law as all Canadian refugee claimants are. Send him back.

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