Canadian immigration asks medical worker fleeing Gaza if he treated Hamas fighters

Kelly O’Connor, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, said she gasped out loud when she saw the text. Any medical worker who denies care to someone hurt in a war zone is committing a “serious breach of the Geneva Convention,” she said in an interview.

“It’s completely outrageous that the government would ask these kinds of questions because it’s trying to promote that someone would violate the Geneva Conventions in wartime, which is really not something that the Canadian military stands for,” O’Connor said.

Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Randall Cohn said the questions in the letter are “patently illegal and absolutely egregious.” He has seen two such letters asking about medical treatment of Hamas members — sent to a doctor and a nurse — and he is aware of two more, he said in an interview.

The people who received these letters and brought them to lawyers were afraid to do it, Cohn said, because they worried they would be penalized by Canadian immigration officials. He wonders how many other people have received similar letters but haven’t shown them to anyone out of fear.

The federal Immigration Department said that an interview with its minister, Marc Miller, was not possible.