A court in Canada has ordered the deportation of an Indian-origin truck driver, Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, involved in a devastating bus crash in 2018 that killed 16 people and injured 13 others from a junior hockey team in Canada.
A native of Calgary, Sidhu missed a stop sign and crashed with the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team's bus at a rural intersection near Tisdale in Saskatchewan Province on April 6, 2018, resulting in the tragic accident.
During a hearing in Calgary, an Immigration and Refugee Board decided that Sidhu should be deported. At the hearing, his attorney, Michael Greene, described Sidhu's deportation as a foregone conclusion based on the criteria of not being a Canadian citizen and having committed a serious crime.
While Sidhu is a permanent resident in Canada, Greene pointed out the simplicity of the issue, saying that "there's nothing to contest on the facts of the case."
The judicial overturning of attempts to consider his clean record and expressions of remorse while pursuing the legal track of prevention has brought him to the point of deportation.
As Greene described, the scope of permanent residents is quite limited, and he did not have rights in this context, whereby personal circumstances could be taken into account. Greene said that he would look at an appeal to have permanent resident status restored on a humanitarian basis for Sidhu.
However, Sidhu will not be taken into custody immediately, despite the deportation order. He must also face a pre-removal risk assessment, and he has the right to request a deferral while he works to get permanent resident status in a process that could take months or even years.
At the same time, family members of the victims said they were inclined to accept deportation for Sidhu, expressing the wish that there be closure and justice.
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