omonatheydid | [shocking story] Canada kicks out family with autistic son

Deportation | Family must leave Moncton by the end of the month because son is deemed too much of a drain on our health-care system

South Korean businessman Tae-Shik Maeng, left, his wife Hee-Eun Jang, right, and their children Sung-Joo Maeng, 15, and Jung-Joo (John) Maeng, 19, have suddenly been advised by the federal immigration department to leave the country by the end of June.

As I'm sure you are aware, the Maeng family of Moncton, formerly of South Korea, faces deportation at the end of June.

I am a support worker with Access Home Care, and for the past two and a half years, I have worked with Sung Joo, the Maengs' autistic son.

I want to share with you what a beautiful family I have come to know.

They are extremely hardworking, honest and loving people. They have been honest with the government in regards to Sung Joo's disability the entire time they have lived in Canada (eight and a half years), during which they have tried to gain permanent residency. They have accepted with appreciation every condition and step the government has asked of them.

I don't believe this action taken to remove them from Canada because of Sung Joo's condition is appropriate. I don't believe the family has been treated with fairness and respect by the government by telling them to leave in less than a month after living here so long and buying a business in Moncton.

I am writing to you on behalf of the family, asking you to support a motion in the legislature that demands a federal ministerial order of exception.

My hope is that Sung Joo's medical expenses will be covered by the province, which has opened its borders to immigrants like the Maengs.

My wish is that I would be able to continue my work with Sung Joo and see him grow and change as I have had the privilege of doing for the past few years.

A move like the government is suggesting would significantly set Sung Joo back in his development. Change is so difficult for children with autism, and to have almost every factor in his life change at the same time would most likely be extremely difficult for him.

As Sung Joo is non-verbal, he communicates in behaviours. This past week he has been engaging in self-injuring behaviours - in hitting himself on the arms and face as he tries to cope with the sense that something is not right within his family.

You can only imagine the distress he will feel if his family must leave everything that is familiar to Sung Joo here in Canada.

I hope you'll support this motion and not only sympathize with the Maengs' situation, but use the voice the people have granted you to change this decision.

Source: dailygleaner

Autism diagnoses take South Korea by surprise
Some families are in denial after U.S. and Korean researchers discover in a Seoul suburb the highest rate of autism ever measured in a general population. The disorder is considered shameful there.

Some simply viewed their children as late bloomers. Others refused to discuss or accept the diagnosis.

But many of the affected parents in Ilsan seemed to at least have an inkling when they were told for the first time that their son or daughter had a disorder that in South Korea had long been seen as shameful.

"They knew from the bottom of their hearts that their children were suffering, struggling," said Dr. Young Shin Kim, a Yale psychiatrist who led a groundbreaking six-year study of autism among children in the middle-class suburb of Seoul. "It was hard for them to hear it."

A team of U.S. and Korean researchers recently announced that it had uncovered here the highest rate of autism ever recorded in a general population.

Autism had been recognized in South Korea only in its most severe forms; the condition was considered so rare that the government barely made an effort to track it. But the outside researchers estimated that 2.64% of the city's children have some form of autism, ranging from relatively mild Asperger's syndrome to more debilitating conditions involving intelligence deficits.

The researchers did not suggest that autism was more prevalent here than anywhere else. Instead, they said their study was more thorough than those producing estimates of about 1% in the United States and Europe and that the same methods could result in similar numbers elsewhere.

But in South Korea, the report's most immediate effect has been on families that participated and have been left to struggle in private to accept the presence of a disorder many didn't even know existed.

"It was so shocking," said one mother. "I felt huge guilt, which is natural for a parent, then pain and hopelessness."

"He never eagerly participated in his class," the mother recalled. "He didn't bother anyone, but he wasn't interested."

Like other parents the researchers made available for interviews with The Times, she agreed to talk on condition that her name not be used. She said she worried that it would raise questions about her family's genes and ruin her daughter's marriage prospects.

The boy, now 12, was found to have Asperger's syndrome. Until his diagnosis by the researchers, his mother had considered him a "late bloomer" who walked and talked later than most children and couldn't measure up to his sister in school.

In those respects, his case was typical. The study, published last month in the American Journal of Psychiatry, concluded that milder varieties of autism, without intelligence deficits, were most common in Ilsan and that two-thirds of the total were children who had never been diagnosed with any developmental disability or mental disorder and who got by in ordinary classrooms.

How such children went undetected provides a lesson in how the concept of illness can vary from one culture to another.

In South Korea, autism is still viewed much as it was in the United States a few decades ago, before its definition was broadened to include "high-functioning" cases, its stigma faded and parent-activists made it a powerful political cause.

Before they could start their work, the researchers had to introduce the idea of a less severe autism to Ilsan, a city of 488,590. The researchers visited dozens of elementary schools to seek the cooperation of parents, teachers and administrators.

Roy Richard Grinker, an anthropologist at the George Washington University and study co-author, told them that children with pronounced problems were not difficult to find. Many already had diagnoses. The researchers, he explained, were interested in "finding kids that have issues but don't get recognized or get help."

The goal was to screen all 55,266 residents ages 7 to 12, by having their parents and teachers answer questionnaires about their behavior, communication and social interactions; 33 of 44 schools participated, and the researchers collected questionnaires on 23,337 children.

Of those whose questionnaires suggested autism, 286 were assessed in detail, resulting in 201 autism diagnoses.

The researchers met with each family to explain the results.

Source: latimes
I AM SO ANGRY AND EMOTIONAL OVER THIS NEWS. My computer is downstairs and I even left because I didn't want my dad to see me cry. The Canada goverment should be ashamed of being such heartless human beings.

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it is, I read this to quickly.

endless charms, endless possibilities

[shocking story] Canada kicks out family with autistic son | Autism in South Korea shameful

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