Canada should take in Russian dissidents awaiting deportation from USA

A little-known corollary of Donald Trump's immigration crack-down is that some prominent Russian dissidents face deportation back to Russia, even though it is clearly understood that they would then be immediately imprisoned, possibly tortured, and maybe even killed.

Yulia Navalnaya (wife of Alexey Navalny, and a high-profile anti-Putin activist in her own right), and the equally high-profile Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, all entered the USA legally under the CPB One program, and have been long awaiting a decision on their refugee petition. 

But Trump, in his single-minded anti-immigration push, has since terminated the CPB One program, and the three, along with many others ("several hundred opposition-minded Russians"), are being held in ICE detention centres before being deported back to Russia. Other much less important anti-Putin activists who have gone back to Russia are known to have received cursory trials and are currently languishing in prison, just like Navalny did for years before his untimely death.

Anyway, the three activists have officially called on Canada to take them in, to save them being deported to Russia. Surprisingly, there is no certainty that Canada will take them, perhaps the main stumbling block being the Safe Third Country Agreement that still exists between Canada and the US, despite the USA under Donald Trump being far from a safe place for refugees of any stripe. Exceptions and exemptions to the agreement are however possible, at the discretion of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, although the government has made no firm commitments so far.

Here's hoping that Canada shows more backbone than America, and agrees to take the three dissidents. There is a way to do it if there is a will.