At age 2, Hillary Booker was taken to Grenada with her parents, who were deported to the island after they were caught overstaying their welcome — and visitor’s visa — in Canada.

Growing up in poverty and despair, Booker always fantasized what life would have been like for her here.

But the return to her birthplace some 12 years later was a disappointment. The teenager, a Canadian citizen by virtue of her birth in Canada, was thrust into adulthood overnight — trying to survive on her own with no friends or family around.

“Back home, everything was a struggle. I thought everything was going to be fun and great in Canada,” said Booker, now 19, who returned to Toronto alone in 2007. “But it turns out to be all negative. I feel lost here.”

Children born in Canada to non-status migrants are Canadian citizens by birth but that doesn’t prevent their non-status parents, often failed refugee claimants, from being removed from the country.

These parents are faced with a dilemma: Should they leave their children behind in state care, or uproot them for a life of destitution and/or danger in their home country?

Some migrants hope their Canadian-born children — who in the United States might be disparagingly referred to as “anchor babies” — will find a brighter future and one day serve as a connection to help them legally return to Canada.

While immigration and border officials consider the child’s interests in deciding whether to let parents stay on humanitarian grounds, critics say such decisions are arbitrary.

Canada is a signatory to the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, said Agnes Samler, president of the Defence for Children International Canada, an advocacy group for children’s rights.

“There is a promise in Canada that we’d take into consideration the best interests of the children, but it doesn’t always happen,” Samler said. “Maybe the parents are not true refugees, but how can you disregard our obligations to the children and tell them we’re going to punish you because of your parents . . . that you need to go or you need to be abandoned?”

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is contemplating changing the Citizenship Act by removing the right to automatic citizenship by birth — a policy unique to Canada and the United States. In most other countries, citizenship is based on blood and requires one parent to be a citizen.

Both immigration and border service officials said they do not keep track of what happens to Canadian-born children of failed refugee claimants. But it appears most of these children end up leaving with their non-status parents.

“The Canada Border Service Agency has no legal authority over Canadian-born children. When making arrangements for removal of non-Canadian family members, the CBSA will advise them of the various options available for their Canadian-born children,” said CBSA spokesperson Luc Nadon.

“This includes travelling with their parents, finding a suitable guardian for their children in Canada, or, if there is no one who could assume guardianship, advising them to contact the provincial child protection authorities.”

Children’s Aid Societies cover children and youth under 16 and stay involved to 21 years of age, but do not keep statistics on Canadian-born children returning to Canada.

“From our experience, many Canadian-born children who return to Canada are between the ages of 16 and 18,” said Emily Strowger, a spokesperson for the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies.

“As Canadian citizens, these youth are able to access the same services available to all Canadian citizens — health care, education, job opportunities, but not child welfare services because of their age.”

When her mother, Jamma, a nurse, and father, Scott, a construction worker, were deported in 1995, they were unable to find jobs and had to entrust their five girls — all born in Grenada except Hillary — to a grand-aunt who was already caring for four other children in her one-bedroom shed.

“I know what it’s like growing up in poverty,” Booker said. “There’s not enough food, no TV, no computer. You take showers in the river and get water from the river.”

In school, 45 kids would jam into small classrooms where worn textbooks were shared by groups of five pupils. There were never enough school supplies to go around.

“There’s nothing there, even after you finish school,” said Booker, who grew up constantly reminded by her parents that she was Canadian and teased by local children as the “abandoned” Canadian.

Booker said her parents always urged her to return to her birthplace for “a better life.” At age 10, she began planning for her return. It took her more than two years just to reacquire her lost birth certificate — “a mission impossible.”

Finally, on Aug. 26, 2007, she got a plane ticket to fly to Toronto. She arrived at Pearson airport at midnight the following day.

Booker shared an apartment near Jane St. and Finch Ave. with her eldest sister Natalie, who was seeking asylum in Canada, and she enrolled in Westview Centennial Secondary School. But after six months, her sister was deported to Grenada when her asylum claim was rejected.

Given her age, Booker was assigned to the guardianship of a pastor at a community church, attending school by day and working at a local No Frills store after school to support herself.

“I was left by myself with people I didn’t know when my sister was deported. You wake up, go to school, then go to work. Sometimes I just cracked and cried for no reason,” said Booker, who moved out of her guardian’s house when she turned 18.

She is now majoring in law and society at York University with hopes of becoming a lawyer.

“I do feel I’ve been wronged by Canada,” she added. “But the experience has made me stronger, more mature and independent.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

When their claim was denied in 1993, they left Canada with baby Angelica. So began Mercau’s journey through South America and the United States — and finally her return to Canada, first briefly in 2008 and permanently last year.

Mercau’s sister, Carol, was born in Chile and brother, Paul, in Utah, where the family settled in 1998, after her parents struggled to provide for the kids in Chile and Argentina while toiling in cleaning and church administrative jobs.

The family succeeded financially in the U.S., with her mother working as a loan officer and her father as a realtor, but the insecurity of being non-status there proved too much. In 2008, Mercau’s parents sent the then-15-year-old “Angie” back to Toronto by herself.

Her first impression of her home country was bad. She was immediately “interrogated” by an immigration officer who questioned her return to Canada and accused her of carrying a fake Canadian passport.

“I honestly didn’t know much about Canada, but I was excited to see my hometown,” said Mercau, who lived at the Vaughan home of a family friend but left after six months because she couldn’t stand the depression and isolation.

She went back to Salt Lake City and finished high school and two years of studies in cosmetology before returning to Toronto in July 2011. Mercau said she is determined to stay for good this time.

“I knew I had to get my parents and siblings here. I’m here to help them. We need some stability. There’s just so much responsibility on me to bring them here,” said Mercau, now 21.

She has been working two jobs — as a part-time retail clerk and full-time secretary at an engineering company — to meet the income needed to sponsor her family to Canada.

But she was disheartened to learn that Ottawa recently imposed a moratorium on sponsoring parents for immigration.

Mercau’s parents and siblings moved to Toronto in February anyway, but their time in Canada is running out. The family faces imminent deportation — and separation.

“I am Canadian but I can’t define myself as Canadian. I grew up mostly in the U.S. but I don’t feel American,” said Mercau. “I just don’t know where I belong.”

But after the recent killing of three people in gunfire three blocks from his Acapulco home, the 42-year-old air-conditioning technician is having second thoughts about bringing her there.

“There are so many drug lords here, so much violence. It is horrible for kids to grow up in Mexico, when you have shootings, massacres and people beheaded all the time,” said Flores, who first arrived in Montreal in 2003 and later relocated to Toronto. Victoria was born at Humber River Regional Hospital.

“Victoria is Canadian. She is in danger in Mexico now and needs protection from the Canadian government.”

Flores said Victoria, now 9 years old, always asks him about their life in Canada and enjoys viewing their photo albums and video from those days.

“I always tell her she’s Canadian. She’s not from here,” said Flores, who owned a T-shirt printing firm in Toronto. “She’d ask me how it feels touching the snow. She wants to know about her babysitter and friends in Canada.”

And then Victoria asks why the family left.

“We tried everything to stay in Canada, to give her a normal life. But my wife and I didn’t want to be illegal in Canada,” Flores said. “We will send her back to Canada when she gets older, so she can have a better future and be free.”

Read more about: