Canada Grants Refugee Status to Russian Fleeing Conscription

Western nations should adopt a general policy of granting refuge to Russians seeking to avoid conscription, and otherwise fleeing Vladimir Putin's increasingly repressive regime.

Canada recently granted refugee status to a Russian man seeking to avoid conscription into Vladimir Putin's brutal war against Ukraine:

Trofim Modlyi is breathing a sigh of relief.

The 19-year-old, who is from Khabarovsk in eastern Russia, near the border with China, received notice at the end of 2022 that his claim for refugee status in Canada had been accepted.

I no longer need to worry about going back to Russia. Obviously I felt, like, fully safe that I don't need to go to Ukraine and take part in this war, Modlyi said.

Modlyi was visiting his sister, Valeriia Granillo, in Grande Prairie, Alta., when Russia invaded Ukraine last February. Granillo, who moved to Canada in 2012 in search of better opportunities, now works in cancer care and is a Canadian citizen.

While he was in Canada, his parents received a conscription notice for him. That is when Modlyi said he decided to apply to become a refugee.

There is no possibility for me to [go] home because I would be drafted [into] the war, and I don't want to take part in it. I don't want to kill innocent people in Ukraine, he said….

Modlyi was determined by the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) to be a Convention refugee — a status that is granted to someone who is outside their home country and is not able to return because of a well-founded fear of persecution.

He and his sister and his parents back home strongly believed that if he goes back there, there would be a strong opportunity that he will be sent to the conflict area — he would be fighting in Ukraine, the lawyer said…

Yu said the family provided newspaper articles that conscripts were being sent to the front lines and that the atrocities committed in Bucha, Ukraine, against civilians (new window) in the early days of the war involved soldiers from Modlyi's region, all of which supported his refugee claim.

The Canadian decision is just a ruling by an administrative agency in this individual case. It does not, by itself, entail a general policy of granting refugee status to Russians fleeing conscription. But, hopefully, Canadian officials will indeed generalize the policy, and other Western nations will follow suit.

Since the start of  Vladimir Putin's large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, hundreds of thousands Russians have fled his increasingly repressive regime. The pace has picked up in the wake of the government's "partial mobilization" order conscripting men to fight in the war.

Sadly, however, Western nations have largely refused to grant refuge to Russians fleeing Putin, even as many adopt more generous policies towards Ukrainian refugees. Even Russians with an extensive record of opposing Putin have sometimes been subjected to unjust immigration detention at the hands of US border authorities. Since the start of the conflict, I have been making the case that this rejection of most Russian migrants is a mistake, on both moral and strategic grounds. For some of my writings on this topic, see here, here, here, and here.

Putin's conscription policy strengthens both the moral and pragmatic arguments for opening Western doors to Russian refugees. Conscription to fight a wrongful war is a grave injustice - even if (unlike me) you reject claims that conscription is generally unjust, because it is a form of forced labor. And granting refuge to potential conscripts deprives Putin of valuable manpower.

In previous writings, I  criticized the argument that we should bar Russians because they are responsible for the war in Ukraine,  countered claims that letting in dissenters will somehow strengthen Putin, and also critiqued the more general claim that citizens of unjust regimes have a duty to stay home and "fix their own countries."

Because I am a Russian Jewish immigrant myself, some readers may suspect that I have become an advocate for Russians fleeing Putin out of ethnic or racial sympathy or bias. Not so. I have also long advocated for openness to Ukrainian refugees, as well, and am a sponsor in the Uniting for Ukraine program facilitating entry of Ukrainians fleeing the war. In a previous post, I listed some of my extensive writings advocating for opening Western doors to predominantly non-white groups of migrants and refugees.

In this context, is also worth noting that the Russian government's conscription drive has disproportionately targeted ethnic minority groups, such as the native peoples of Siberia and the Caucasus. Such ethnic discrimination further strengthens the case for granting refugee status to Russian citizens fleeing conscription, at least those who belong to the discriminated-against groups.

The 1951 Refugee Convention (as later amended) bars governments from deporting refugees, defined as people whose "life or freedom would be threatened on account of [their] race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." US law has a very similar definition. People targeted for conscription based on their race or ethnicity are pretty obviously facing threats to their "life or freedom" because of their "race" or "nationality" or "membership of a particular social group."

Comments

[Currentsitguy]

I am generally not sympathetic to refugees, but I think in this case anything that bleeds Russia of it’s fighting age men is a good thing.

[Jmaie]

"I am generally not sympathetic to refugees, but I think in this case anything that bleeds Russia of it’s fighting age men is a good thing."

I must be in a down mood, my first reaction to this was, "Must be in favor of the war..."

Am (reasonably) sure that's not what you meant.

[David Nieporent]

I am generally not sympathetic to refugees,

…because?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I am generally not sympathetic to refugees,

I am pleased to observe that your preferences have been defeated at the modern American marketplace of ideas.

Are you similarly not sympathetic with respect to downscale Americans who require subsidies from more successful Americans (rural broadband, rural economic development, rural electrification, rural hospital assistance, etc.)?

Who would have guessed that rural electrification -- which put a bunch of half-educated, bigoted hayseeds on the internet to fuel QAnon, Pizzagate, birtherism, Proud Boys, insurrection, MAGA, etc. -- would turn out to be such a lousy idea?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Maybe these clinger hayseeds whom you loathe so much can conscientiously object to fighting for an American regime which despises them.

I wonder how we'd have done in WWII without the aid of the clinger population - maybe they should have been exempt from the fighting so that better people could have the honor of going to the front.

Though I suspect that you're all in favor of making cannon fodder out of the people you hate. Hastens the replacement process, don't you know.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The 75-year record indicates we need to find a way to improve the quality of our military personnel.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Also, we might want to work on the quality of the commanders-in-chief.

[Frank Drackman]

Wow, Jerry, you really have it in for the "Klingers, Hayseeds..." (in my youth we called them (out of their earshot of course, "Shit Kickers")
For some reason the worst Shit Kickers I ever ran into was that horrible year my dad got stationed at 29 Palms....

Frank

[Currentsitguy]

I am never in favor of wealth transfers. If local and state governments, along with taxpayers weren’t transferring the vast bulk of their wealth to Washington in the first place, they’d have more than enough to take care of their own needs. The solution to most of America’s problems is to starve DC.

Decided to respond to you anyways despite your inability to properly reply.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Your argument seems to ignore — and conflict with — the inability of shambling rural and southern areas to succeed even when subsidized by better communities and states.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I know there's been quite a debate on whether conscientious objectors can be protected by religious freedom or by refugee status - I don't really know all the details - I don't think they've got to the point of protecting full-on pacifists, but selective objectors seem to have a better chance if they're resisting a war which the country of refuge objects to.

This is the opposite of conscientious-objector law in the U. S., where you have to be a 100% pacifist - it's not enough to object to a particular war, if there's any war you'd support, you fail the test (unless it's some religious End Times thing). That's why they decided to use a technicality to release Muhammad Ali - he objected to Vietnam, but there was evidence he might support a war of black liberation, so painting him as a pure pacifist would have been a stretch.

[Dr. Ed 2]

If I am not mistaken, Canada also gave refugee status to a lot of Americans dodging the Vietnam Draft -- that's where they all hung out for a decade until Carter gave them amnesty, and a lot didn't come back even then.

And then Quebec really didn't try to hard to enforce the draft during WW-II, even though France was one of the countries being fought for...

[Frank Drackman]

Will Jimmuh Cartuh still be alive to pardon them when the Wah's over?
Been to Canada once, think I'd rather live in Roosh-a, not quite as cold.

Frank

[F.D. Wolf]

I believe Canada never officially offered amnesty to the American deserters and draft evaders that fled there during the Vietnam War, but took no steps to expel them. It was more or less a "wink and a nod" unofficial asylum.

Coincidentally, today in history, January 21. 1977, Jimmy Carter, one day after his inauguration, pardoned all draft evaders. The deserters were not pardoned and, technically, still remain subject to arrest. One difference between the draft evaders and the deserters was the former tended to be college educated and relatively affluent young men who had run out of deferments, whereas the deserters tended to be lower-income young men who did not go to college, so did not have student deferments available to them. The former obviously had more political clout than the latter.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I know they didn't pardon *all* the deserters, but I thought they pardoned *some,* no?

[F.D. Wolf]

I don't know. Perhaps some were pardoned individually, but not any big group to my recollection. I could certainly be wrong about that. I think a great many just ended up with their respective services giving them general discharges.

I recall the case of Allen Abney, a Marine Corps deserter who had gone to Canada in 1968, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1977. He was arrested in 2006 in Idaho after he and his wife had driven into the United States on a trip to Reno. He was held in a military prison for a week, but ultimately the Marines gave him a general discharge and released him.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I do indeed recall reading that Carter was more skimpy with the working-class deserters versus the mass pardon for the middle-class evaders. Still, I thought there were *some* pardons of deserters.

[F.D. Wolf]

At the time, Carter got flak from the Right for pardoning the draft evaders, but he also got flak from the Left for NOT pardoning the deserters. He had already managed to alienate everybody by his second day in office. And it was pretty much downhill from there.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

ouch

[Frank Drackman]

Of course this is from the (Deranged) AlGores invented Internets so take it with a large grain (of Green) Salt,
"In addition, at least 30,000 Canadians volunteered to serve in the U.S. armed forces during the war. At least 134 Canadians died or were reported missing in Vietnam."
So they could have stayed in Canadia, and do whatever they do in Canadia, but instead "defected" and served in JFK/LBJ's wah (Eff you, who got the PWO's released? the POTUS who's name rhymes with Nichard Dixon)

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

OK, guess I have to be the "Keeper of Record" here
"Proclamation 4483, also known as the Granting Pardon for Violations of the Selective Service Act, was a presidential proclamation issued by Jimmy Carter in 1977. It granted pardons to those who evaded the draft in the Vietnam War by violating the Military Selective Service Act from August 4, 1964 to March 28, 1973.[1] It was implemented through Executive Order 11967.[2]"
So yes, it was Jimmuh Cartuh's old Ass, in the Oval Orifice, with a pen.
And 3 years later, reinstitutes Registration for the Draft, which continues to the present day, so we'll have plenty of young Servicemen to get killed when the Roosh-uns start bombing the Challenger Tank factories in England, and umm wherever the Bradley's come from?

Frank "Of course Jimmuh Cartuh's Old Sexist Ass didn't require Females to register"

[Longtobefree]

"Canada recently granted refugee status to a Russian man seeking to avoid conscription into Vladimir Putin's brutal war against Ukraine:"

So would they grant refugee status if it was a non-brutal war?

[Jmaie]

"Since the start of the conflict, I have been making the case that this rejection of most Russian migrants is a mistake, on both moral and strategic grounds."

Too many words. Try:

Since forever, I have been making the case that rejection of most migrants is a mistake, on both moral and strategic grounds."

[myself]

I think the strongest counterargument to granting them refugee status is that many of them are in full support of the war, they just don't want to fight in it personally.

Though even if true, I'd much prefer them to be outside of Russia and unable to be conscripted or work in their arms industry.

[Gasman]

The calculus of Ilya seems to be that we can bleed the Russian army dry, one potential soldier at a time.
But would the greater good be achieved by letting the Russians have one more unwilling conscript? It seems haphazard to reward those Russians with the means to skip country. Jimmy sorted resisters into those who were already in the military (deserters) and those who by happenstance were not yet in the military (dodgers). Hardly seems fair. Same with Russians, sorting immigration on privilege and happenstance.
Sort them on overall utility. Deserters should get priority, because they do more damage to the Russian army. Those merely unwilling as conscripts need to become deserters first.

[NM-Steve]

Was the asylum decision premised on the person fleeing conscription, or on Canada's views towards Russia in this particular conflict? I would note that Ukraine has a draft, and many have fled it. Libertarians are usually opposed to conscription of any type, on principle. Would the author be as supportive of a Ukrainian draft "dodger" being granted asylum?

It would be interesting to see libertarians address the apparent conflict between their (or at least many of them) stated stance on conscription and their views on its use by Ukraine. Such apparent contradictions are often illustrative, even if their discussion is often unwelcome.