Focusing on the case of Daniel Garcia, this paper examines the limits of a universal individualist legal framework for the rights of undocumented migrant children in Canada. Daniel Garcia was an eighteen-year old when he was apprehended by police in Toronto and deported from Canada in 2011 (CITE). As the analysis will show, this case exemplifies the problems of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (2001) and sheds lights on how the law breaches children’s rights as defined by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is an exemplary case of how a universal rights framework has serious limitations for undocumented migrants, including children, arguably the most vulnerable undocumented migrants of all.
The paper is organized into four parts. The first part sketches out the broad contours of legal scholar …show more content…
706). In this way, “international human rights law…” has had a negative impact on the claims of vulnerable persons, as when specific rights pertaining to their situations are not outlined within the rights framework, the individual’s claims for refuge is often disregarded (Ramji-Nogales, 2014, p. 706). The author illustrates that the dependence on international human rights law and rights, in general, can have a negative impact on the way undocumented migrants are regarded and spoken about in the public sphere (Ramji-Nogales, 2014, p. 706). This is prolonging the establishment of “…a hierarchy of suffering that prioritizes the “supposedly unjust suffering” of certain “innocent” victims at the expense of others who suffer in different ways or are less able to meet increasingly strict unrealistic standards of morality” (Ramji-Nogales, 2014, p.