I don't have any sympathy for this guy...he says he "just wants a chance". I'm sure he's been more than one chance already...
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/18082010/...-sentence.html
Ottawa man calls deportation order to native Somalia a death sentence
"OTTAWA - An Ottawa man who's to be deported to his native Somalia - a country he left two decades ago - because of his criminality says the punishment amounts to a death sentence.
"I will probably get killed; it's like the wild, wild west over there," Abadir Ali said during an interview at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, where he's been held for more than two years by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
In Somalia, Ali said, he would be targeted because he doesn't speak the language and has no immediate family to help him. The 27-year-old has few memories of the east African country where he spent his early years.
Ali was born on Jan. 1, 1983 in the town of Hargeisa, in northern Somalia, where his father was a member of the Somali National Movement. The movement opposed the regime of then-Somali dictator, Siad Barre.
His family was forced to flee Hargeisa when it came under bombardment by government forces in 1988. Ali spent the next three years in a refugee camp; his father was jailed.
He remembers "mostly chaos" from his childhood in Somalia.
Ali arrived in Canada with his stepmother in August 1991, and was granted refugee status one year later. He clashed with his stepmother, however, and grew up largely in foster homes. He has since lost touch with most of his immediate family, including his father.
Last year, the immigration department declared Ali a threat to Canadians because of five adult criminal convictions, two of them for violent assaults. A Federal Court judge recently upheld that assessment.
Immigration authorities are now preparing to deport Ali, who insists he is not the hardened criminal portrayed by federal officials. He has never been sentenced to federal prison time - two years or more - for any of his offences.
"I'm a human being; everybody makes mistakes in their lives," he said, adding: "There's much worse guys out there than me walking around the streets."
Ali appealed to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to halt his deportation.
"Don't treat me like a number," he pleaded. "I just want to be with my girlfriend and the two kids. I just want a chance."
Erin Carruthers, 26, an Ottawa child-and-youth worker, has been involved with Ali for more than three years. They met at a Tim Hortons coffee shop where Ali helped Carruthers with her two young children.
The federal government moved to deport Ali after he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in the July 2007 beating of a legally blind woman in downtown Ottawa. The victim was kicked and punched so badly that she had to undergo brain surgery.
In January 2008, Ali was sentenced to 47 days in jail for the crime in addition to the five months he had already served.
But he has been in jail ever since - stalled by an immigration "hold" while his deportation case proceeds.
Ali contends he has already been punished twice for the crime, and if deported, will be punished yet again.
"I'm remorseful, I really am," he said. "But what they're trying to do is crazy. I feel like I'm being kicked around like a football.""
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