Under a proposed new law, thousands of permanent residents could lose their status and be deported for minor convictions, from shoplifting to traffic and drug offences, warn Canada’s top immigration lawyers.

“These are young children brought to Canada at a young age as permanent residents, raised and schooled in Canada . . . (but) never took out citizenship,” lawyer Guidy Mamann told a news conference Thursday.

“It is unconscionable that a country like Canada, which has always allowed for second chances, to now embark on a new ‘one strike you’re out’ approach.”

The lawyers — also including Mendel Green, Barbara Jackman, Robin Seligman and Andras Schreck — said Ottawa’s Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act would in fact target permanent residents convicted of minor crimes.

Many people in the African, Caribbean, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, English, Irish and Scottish communities have not acquired Canadian citizenship despite having been here for a long time, they said.

The federal government has always had the authority to strip landed-immigrant status from a permanent resident convicted of a serious crime, but Bill C-43 would allow appeals only for those sentenced to less than six months in jail, down from the current threshold of two years.

According to Schreck, vice-president of the 1,200-member Ontario Criminal Lawyers Association, the net would now be cast broadly enough to include people committed of minor offences such as possession of marijuana plants.

“We are not talking about serial killers, murderers or bank robbers,” Schreck said.

Not only would the new regulation punish those who ran afoul of the law, it would go after permanent residents found to have misrepresented themselves when they applied for immigration, Jackman said.

An honest omission on a person’s employment history or incorrect dates of certain events written down on an immigration application could come back to haunt the immigrant years later.

Current law allows convicted immigrants to lose their immigrant status and be banned from re-entering Canada for two years. The new law would prohibit readmission for five years.

Jackman believes the changes would put the status of “thousands” of permanent residents in peril.

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“This is an attack on immigrant communities. This government is empowered because of these communities. It’s stabbing them in the back, as far as I’m concerned. You want to stick with your punch line, ‘You do the crime, you do the time,’ but don’t be misleading,” Seligman said.

The lawyers said the proposed legislation could face a court challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, given previous Supreme Court of Canada decisions directing that authorities must consider humanitarian and risk factors before deporting a person.