What is it to be gay? Can our gayness be measured by how others perceive us? Are we gay if we never have same-sex nudie relations? Are we gay because we say we are, or are we gay because someone else says we are? For asylum seeker Alvaro Orozco and Canadian Immigration Minister Diane Finley, these questions have never been more poignant or important to consider.
Since his Oct 4, 2007 deportation date, Orozco, a 22-year-old gay man born in Nicaragua, has been in hiding in the Toronto area. The deportation order is so far the last word from Immigration Canada on his three-year-long journey to achieve refugee status based on sexual orientation, a journey that began at the age of the 13 when Orozco fled his family to escape abuse and fled his country in pursuit of freedom.
Currently, Orozco’s only hope of staying in Canada and avoiding the persecution and violence that would greet him upon returning to Nicaragua is for Minister Finley to grant him a Minister’s Permit to stay in Canada based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
As a boy Orozco says that he was different from his brothers. His father, who called him “marica” (derogatory term for gay), knew it as well and physically and emotionally punished him for it. As he entered his teens he began to feel that the macho Nicaraguan society would not be much more accepting of him. Orozco was right.
The same year Orozco turned seven, the government of Nicaragua added an amendment to the penal code that criminalized same-sex marriage, as well as sodomy. Six years later, in 1998, Orozco began his epic journey from Managua, the place of his birth, to Toronto, his adopted hometown. In between, he travelled through South America, sleeping in churches and landing in jails, he swam the Rio Grande to get to America, where he was taken in by members of the 7th Day Adventist Church, and eventually, inspired from his internet research, made his way via Buffalo to Canada, a place he felt was a beacon of hope and resources for gay immigrants.
As soon as he arrived in Canada he sought refugee status based on the domestic violence he had experienced. Coming out to officials and befrienders was not something Orozco felt comfortable doing, however. It wasn’t until he witnessed the "outness" of gay men in Toronto that he felt comfortable enough to include sexual orientation into his claim. While living in Nicaragua and throughout his journey, Orozco maintained and practiced the survival skill of concealing his sexual orientation. “I deliberately tried to act as ‘straight’ as possible” he says, “I was terrified of being perceived as gay.” This is where the irony gets thick and tragic.
On Oct 6, 2005, Orozco appeared via teleconference before Deborah Lamont, a member of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board. He was in Toronto; she was in Calgary. After what he describes as a grueling process that tested his mere six years of formal education, his claim was rejected. Ms Lamont did not believe that Orozco was gay.
In her ruling, she stated that Orozco was fabricating the sexual orientation portion of his claim in order to support “a non-existent claim for protection in Canada.” She found his “many explanations unsatisfactory for why he chose not to pursue same-sex relationships in the US.” She also cited the fact that at age 13, Orozco did not inform Nicaraguan officials that he was escaping the country because he was gay.
Implicit in this ruling, says Orozco’s lawyer El-Farouk Khaki, is the notion that Orozco isn’t “gay enough,” or does not “appear” to be gay. “The decision” he says, “shows a lack of understanding of issues facing queer kids from homophobic cultures.”
It also raises important questions: does the Canadian justice system run on the assumption that everyone is straight unless proved otherwise? Does that make Canada’s judicial culture homophobic? What does a sexual minority “look” like in the eyes of the law? How do we prove we are gay? Should we have to?
A few days before his Feb 2007 deportation date, Orozco received a two-month deferral by the justice department that gave his lawyer time to fill a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment application. The PRRA, like his initial claim, was rejected and resulted in the now eclipsed Oct 4 deportation date.
Sadly, it seems that due to his inability to appear camp-on-command, have sex before he was ready or exercise a suicidal need to tell the people he was fleeing from why he was doing so, Immigration Canada has forced Orozco to hide—the very thing he was attempting to escape from. V
Visit orangehabitat.com/alvaro for updates or more information on Orozco’s case.
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