A California man who arrived at the Canadian border expecting to become a landed immigrant and join his Brampton wife and children was instead detained, denied entry and cited for attempting to smuggle child pornography into the country on his cellphone.
In a time of heightened vigilance — at borders, and against porn — what had landed him in trouble was a picture of his own unclothed baby son, snapped a couple of years ago so "we could all tease him at his wedding one day," says his wife, Shinderpal Singh.
The 36-year-old mother of two got a call shortly after midnight last Friday from a Canada Border Services Agency officer in Sarnia informing her that her husband, Paramjit Singh, had been sent back to the United States. Paramjit says he was pressured into signing a document withdrawing his application to enter Canada and handed a notice to appear May 1 in a Sarnia court.
While processing Singh's documents, border officials checked his phone and found a photo of a boy naked from the waist down wearing a taraggi — a thread with tiny silver bells worn by Sikh boys as an auspicious charm. Officers looked through Paramjit's U-Haul truck and found albums containing two other questionable photos, one of son Nevjot, then 3 months old, unclothed in his father's arms, and another taken a couple of years later showing the boy naked after a shower.
The cellphone and photos were confiscated, and the 39-year-old man was cited for possessing and "attempting to smuggle an electronic image of prohibited and obscene material." Paramjit said officials demanded he sign a document declaring, "I hereby voluntarily withdraw my application to enter Canada and agree to leave Canada without delay." He has since returned to Fremont, Calif.
"I was so shocked," his teary wife said yesterday. "The officer said my husband was charged because of child pornography. I asked him, `What's pornography?' I had no idea what it was. "I know what photos he was talking about," she said, flipping through albums of photos, some showing their boy unclothed at various events and ceremonies. "I took some of those photos myself. It's just part of our culture and there's nothing unusual about it." Shinderpal, a landed immigrant, had sponsored her husband to join her in Canada, along with Nevjot, now 5, and daughter Priyinka, 2.
A machine operator, she has been in Canada since 1995. She was introduced to Paramjit, then a chef at an Indian restaurant in Fremont, in 2000 through family connections. The two were married in the United States and both children are U.S. citizens. Although Paramjit received a green card in 2004, allowing him to stay permanently in the United States, the family decided to settle in Canada. The application was approved in February.
"We had been travelling back and forth for years, and were looking forward to this day when the whole family could finally be together," she said. "My husband is a nice, caring man. We just took those photos for fun. How could something like this happen to us?"
The man is no more a child pornographer than pig’s fly, and I want to believe this is just a flat out case of bigotry and racism on the part of Canadian immigration officers. But bigotry and racism are issues that can be successfully tackled. Remedies exist under the law, but legislative stupidity is a chronic malaise that seems utterly incurable. Furthermore, one cannot legislative common sense but I really do think that a lack of common sense should not be seen as a desirable trait in any custom or immigration official.
MP Colleen Beaumier is going to bat for the Singh family and I wish her godspeed. No doubt the Singh family will be happy to have the criminal charges resolved in a dismissal and be re-united. But speaking as a Canadian, I won’t be happy until a formal apology is issued and the immigration officials involved are dismissed. This would be a good time for Monte Solberg to step up and show us the mettle he is really made of.
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