SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
If present Canadian immigration laws were in place in the 1980s, Siyath Sok ­ who has called Yellowknife home since 2011-- said he probably wouldn't be alive.

Siyath Sok ­ who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his parents fled from Cambodia in the 1980s ­ said if immigration laws were as strict then as they are today his family would never have escaped the hands of the Khmer Rouge. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo

Sok said he was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1982 after his parents and older brother had fled from the Khmer Rouge, the communist-leaning former-ruling party of Cambodia credited with the deaths of 200,000 Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. He said he's frustrated at the plight of millions of refugees trying to flee Syria and thinks Ottawa needs to do more.

"I think the government is taking a really lax attitude toward it," he said. "If what happens these days happened back in 1982, we would not be here."

Sok said when he was in the womb, his parents were on the run with his brother and had managed to get onto a list of refugees heading to Australia. He said when the Khmer Rouge found the list, they executed every person on it they could find.

"That's how close we were," he said. "It's by the grace of God we're here."

He said his mother managed to escape with his brother and wound up in the Thailand camp.

His father, San Sok, was captured and put to work in a labour camp, he said.

"He was slated for execution," he said. "But I believe it was a couple nights prior, he was able to break free and ran through the jungle for two weeks to find us. He's got a pretty harrowing story."

Sok said his father ran without footwear and had to kill and eat monkeys to stay alive, but eventually he was reunited with his young family. Sok said he was born shortly after.

A church group in St. Thomas, Ontario sponsored them and it took almost a year for the family to get into Canada, he said.

"I was told it was fairly quick," he said. "There were some complications, not on the Canadian side, but at the refugee camp itself."

Once in Canada, he said, it took a while for his family to get settled.

"It took us a few years to sort of get my parents accustomed to the culture, and to get a job, and to be able to rent a home."

He said he's grown up like any other Canadian kid, but he never forgets where his story began.

"What scares me the most is how close we were to not even being on this Earth anymore," he said. "It was very close."

Federal requirements should be relaxed

He said the federal government needs to relax the requirements for refugees trying to enter the country, because most of the refugees don't have a hope of meeting the requirements.

Some things required ­ like English classes and finding a trade ­ make sense to him, he said. But financial stipulations, requiring the refugees to amass a small fortune to help pay for the transfer just isn't realistic, he said.

"When you do come from a country such as that, Syria or anywhere else in the third world, you're not going to be able to make the kind of money that's required to get here unless you have a lot of help," he said. "My parents have forked over a lot of money."

Sok met his wife Nicole, in 2007, and they moved to Yellowknife from Ontario in 2011, when Sok found a job working with an electrical company. They have two children ­ Mackenzie, 3, and Caleb, 1 ­ and their third child is on the way, if not born already.

"Her due date was actually yesterday," Sok said last Thursday.

Sok said he loves his life in the city because it's quiet, everybody looks after each other and he's had time to get into some hobbies like carpentry, camping and fishing.

"I love it," he said. "It's a place we can start fresh."

Family still in Cambodia

Sok said most of his family is still in Cambodia, and a number are still trying to enter the country, having initiated the process almost seven years ago.

The family wants to bring in two of Sok's orphaned cousins but they're having trouble because now they are over 18.

"The government is trying to fight us on their age," he said. "They are saying they're 18 now, and should be able to be self-sufficient. It's nearly impossible for them to be. Without parents in a country like Cambodia, you're not going to make it very far."

Ottawa moves

On Sept. 19, the federal government announced new measures that will see 10,000 Syrian refugees promised resettlement in Canada in the next three years fast-tracked to complete the resettlement more than one year earlier.

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