Osei To Be Deported Today

`Fate is hanging in the balance' Prayers of nation with youth worker

Toronto, Canada -- He's lived in Ghana. He's lived in Sierra Leone. But Canada is home to Benjamin Osei, who is to be deported today.

He leaves on a wing and a prayer.


"My choice has been Canada. It's the place I've spent seven years. I'm more established here than Ghana and I would prefer to stay and continue with the kids, guiding them," the youth worker said yesterday, referring to children in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood.


"But I don't know what will happen. My fate is hanging in the balance."


He's unsure for two reasons:


He reported to Pearson airport last week, obeying a deportation order from Immigration Canada.

But last Friday, Lufthansa airlines refused to let him board for security reasons, which they would not specify. Osei was told to go home and wait for a call from Canada's Border Services Agency.


And as a Christian — he works for four churches on donated funds and has a divinity degree from Acadia University — he believes in prayer.


Canadians from across the country have heard his story and many, he said, have been praying for him to stay. When a program on his work with young people and his immigration problems was broadcast on the Crossroads Christian Communication's 100 Huntley Street, the phone lines to Immigration Minister Judy Sgro were nearly knocked out.


"So," he said yesterday, in the hallway of Friendship Community Church in a plaza on Finch Ave. W., "when I did not go, it was the answer to a lot of prayers."


He's been staying with local clergymen's families while he waited to hear back from the Border Services Agency, which oversees enforcement of deportation orders.

"I no longer have independence," he said. "People have to feed me and take me around. They are providing for me. But I'm not alone. The heart of Canadians, the entire country is behind me."


Osei's application to stay in Canada as a refugee and an appeal to remain on humanitarian grounds were denied. The refugee board ruled that his evidence was not credible.


Though born in Ghana, Osei lived most of his life in Sierra Leone, where his first wife and children were killed at the beginning of the civil war. He said he was jailed and tortured.


Later, in Ghana, he said soldiers from the Sierra Leone army living in Ghana threatened him and he was perceived as a rebel collaborator. But the refugee board ruled that there was "adequate state protection" for Osei in Ghana.


Now the churches are looking to the future and Osei's return with his wife and two children, who are in Ghana. He has never seen his youngest child, a daughter who is 3 1/2. Under the direction of the Friendship Community Church, which is part of the Christian Reformed Church, a Ben Fund has been set up.

They hope he'll be back within a year, said Rev. Fred Witteveen, and that enough money will be donated to the Ben Fund to pay for the family's airfare back to Canada and for the youth programs that will continue with help from volunteers in Osei's absence.


Osei spent yesterday in a series of interviews. He wanted to show his visitors a photo album of the children he's worked with the past four years.


A quiet, solemn man in these meetings, he walked to the door of the church and tidied up the entranceway, humming a tune.


It was "Jesus Loves Me."