Note: This story has been changed from a previously published version.
Eight-year-old Eugene Kim was told she would have to apply in writing to Citizenship and Immigration Canada to hug her mother.
Kim Suk Yeung has been held at a Rexdale detention centre since Feb. 18, awaiting deportation Saturday night to South Korea. Eugene will go with her. The girl spent three days at the detention centre with her mother, who then sent her to live with Korean-Canadian friends so she could keep attending Grade 2 at Dovercourt junior public school.
It was Eugene's question to her best friend Camille Chan's grandmother, "What is detention?" that made a close community of families around the school realize the mother they so admired had been arrested. It moved them to come to her defence with dozens of letters.
"Eugene is central to this," says Marie Foley, Camille's mother. "She is our citizen. If she goes, we stand to lose her contribution to this country.
"This is not about ripping off the system. Suk Yeung is a hard-working woman who is raising a model citizen. Her greatest sin is wanting a better life for her child."
Kim Suk Yeung arrived nine years ago with a male friend on visitor's visas. Eugene was born in April 2001. The girl's father returned to Korea and has married. Kim held various jobs, most recently behind the counter at a drycleaner's on Davenport Rd., where the neighbours met mother and daughter.
She applied for refugee status in 2004, knowing South Koreans are rarely granted it, so Eugene could have a health card. After spending $5,000 on legal fees, Kim lost and she was ordered deported.
"I've tried to do my best for my daughter," Kim said in an interview at the detention centre yesterday. "She's a very good girl, she has a very good heart. Korea is a small land with many people, concrete everywhere and cars. Here, she has a park and can ride a bike and go to a swimming pool. For me, (Korea) is okay. But I'm worried for her."
In a kitchen where muffins are baking and girls run in for a quick hug, Marie Foley's sister, Kathleen Foley, says: "We were naïve. We'd never seen this before, these invisible, quiet stories. We don't know those voices, but we do know one.
"This case is a microcosm. We need to have a debate about this, about undocumented workers. Are we going to deport 60,000 people, parents and their children?"
Toronto has an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 illegal immigrants.
Dozens of letters have been sent to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney pleading for a reprieve for the Kims, including from local MP Mario Silva and city Councillor Adam Giambrone.
Foley and Chan and other families take Eugene to visit her mother at the detention centre once a week.
During last week's visit, as Eugene held a hand to the glass separating her from her mother, Foley asked if the girl could hug Kim. "They told me, `You have to apply in writing through Immigration for a hug.'"
In her letter to Kenney, Kathleen Foley wrote, "At the school's Winter Concert, Eugene was the narrator and captured everybody's heart. She was recently given the school's citizenship award to recognize her leadership skills."
In her own letter, Eugene wrote the minister: "I want to stay here, because there is so much to do. I was born here. I love Canada, it is my home."
At the heart of the community campaign is the question: What are the rights of a Canadian-born child? A 1999 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the case of Jamaican immigrant Mavis Baker and her four children said those rights should get "substantial weight." But rulings in the 10 years since, salted with post-9/11 anti-terrorist fears, have eroded that position.
"The Baker decision was a progressive and important decision, and we need to get back to that," said Silva. "The minister always has the discretion to decide in the best interests of the child. We don't gain anything by deporting this family. They are fully integrated into the community, which is why people are coming together for them."
As for the argument that Kim and Eugene should get in line, Silva replied: "The system is broken. The reality is a lot of economic migrants will never be able to come to Canada with our bizarre points system."
When Eugene is 10, Kim hopes to send her back to Toronto and may one day join her. At 18, Eugene could sponsor her mother. But now, "she needs her mother. She isn't old enough to be on her own."