By Lauren Scott

After three years of living in Canada, the family of Felipe Montoya, an environmental studies professor at York University, was denied permanent residency in the country. The reason for denial: Montoya’s 13 year-old son, Nico, has Down Syndrome.

Nico was considered to be too much of a “burden” on Canadian taxpayers and the family is now forced to move back to Costa Rica in June.

Natalie Spagnuolo is a doctoral student and disability activist whose doctoral research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, explores issues of citizenship and disability. The Leveller interviewed her by e-mail:

The Leveller: What do you think of the Montoya’s situation? Why has this happened, or how is something like this possible?

Natalie: This is not at all a unique situation. Decisions like these may violate promises of inclusion in international and national human rights legislation, but unfortunately they are incredibly common. These decisions are applied against people with disabilities who are born outside of Canada, but they reflect the devaluation and dehumanization that most Canadians with intellectual disabilities and their families experience on a day-to-day basis. This takes place through the denial of basic supports, appropriate housing, a living income, education, and opportunities for meaningful participation, despite the fact that their citizenship status entitles them to these things.

The Leveller: Why would immigration officials make the decision based on the grounds of “burden” on the system? Is this important to look at or should there be more important considerations to immigration?

Natalie: These sorts of decisions hinge on subjective determinations of what counts as “burden,” so there is lots of room for personal prejudice to shape the results. The stigma associated with intellectual disability is often so strong that it discounts entire families, and not just the individual with the disability. So even though Felipe has secure employment as a tenured faculty member, the stigma associated with his son Nico is strong enough to make his whole family appear to be a liability, even if they don’t need to draw on social services because of Felipe’s income.

The Leveller: How do you think officials came to put a price of $6,000-7,000 on burden-ship? Are people with disabilities often talked about in terms of cost?

Natalie: These sorts of valuations are really central to how people with disabilities experience oppression and social exclusion. It’s impossible to quantify and fix something as dynamic as a person’s level of need. This tactic really just serves to justify exclusion for other reasons. The main function of these cost-benefit analyses is that they perpetuate existing prejudices against people with disabilities by underestimating their potential contributions and overestimating the costs of support and then just focusing on these costs.

The Leveller: Is the immigration system biased against people with disabilities? Why can this be rationalized as fair?

Natalie: The immigration system represents disability in medical terms, seeing it as “unhealthy.” It assumes that people with disabilities experience a low quality of life for “natural,” rather than social reasons. The same logic motivates a lot of disability violence,  such as so-called mercy killings. Disability activist groups have been very vocal in explaining that socio-economic deprivation and social isolation — and not their own impairments — are a major source of suffering.  This really contradicts more commonly-held definitions of disability that the Canadian government espouses at other levels, which acknowledge that physical environments and social attitudes and processes are structured in a way that advantages certain people and excludes others.

The Leveller: Felipe has called the decision medieval and barbaric. Would you agree with that statement? Why or why not?

Natalie: The incarceration and segregation of people with disabilities is a very current practice: Ontario only recently closed its regional centres, which were institutions that confined people with intellectual disabilities, and the survivor community is still working hard to ensure that reparations for atrocities committed against former residents and other promises are honoured. At the same time, people with intellectual disabilities are subject to new atrocities and forms of violence. People with disabilities, especially intellectual disabilities, are often one of the last groups to be included in progressive change.

This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 8 No. 6 (March 2016).