Canada grants refugee status to white South African

A Canadian immigration court has granted refugee status to South African citizen Brandon Huntley, saying that he faces persecution as a white man in his home country:

Huntley, 31, "would stand out like a ‘sore thumb’ due to his colour in any part of the country", the board’s panel chair, William Davis, said in his decision.

Huntley, who grew up in Mowbray, said he had been attacked seven times and stabbed four times "by African South Africans" between 1991 and 2003.

Davis found he "was a victim because of his race rather than a victim of criminality".

The South African goverment is peeved that it wasn’t even allowed to testify in the case, particularly since none of the attacks on Huntley were ever reported to the police. "Canada’s reasoning for granting Huntley a refugee status can only serve to perpetuate racism," said an African National Congress statement.

The "sore thumb" remark is particularly ripe for mockery, as evidence by this Onion-esque piece reporting the tribunal’s shock that Hartley "wasn’t the last white in South Africa" and warning Canada to "expect a deluge of young, unemployable, white South Africans."

Hartley’s case, argued by a South African immigrant who had been looking for a test-case for years, does seem a little dodgy. And all the more so since the country’s "white flight" and its high crime rate are real issues that deserve more serious discussion.