Canada Court Calls Oath to Monarch Unconstitutional; US’s ICE Detains Sikh Restaurateur

Alberta, Canada’s Court of Appeal has unanimously found that the provincial law society’s Oath of Allegiance to the monarch infringes on religious freedom and is unconstitutional. The decision issued by three judges on 16 Dec was the latest in the challenge filed in 2022 by Prabjot Singh Wirring, a devout Amritdhari (initiated) Sikh. Wirring said he made an absolute oath and submitted himself to Akal Purakh (Time/death-less Being) and is prohibited from making a similar allegiance to another entity or sovereign. The Alberta government has 60 days to ask the Supreme Court of Canada to challenge the court's ruling. Meanwhile, Babblejit Bubbly Kaur, a 60-year-old Indian-origin Sikh woman was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on 1 Dec while attending a routine biometrics appointment linked to her pending green card application. Kaur, a former co-owner of Natraj Cuisine of India and Nepal in Belmont Shore, was taken into custody at a US Citizenship and Immigration Services facility, shocking her family and members of the local community where she has lived for more than three decades. She has no criminal record. In an interview, journalist Tanay Gokhale who spent the past year with the Sikh community in California talks about how rising ICE activity is reshaping daily life for Sikh immigrants in California. 'Indians are the fifth-largest undocumented group in the US. The community is largely under-reported, and a lot of these people are Sikhs coming from Panjab to settle in California. They’re working blue-collar jobs like agricultural labor or in the trucking industry...Gurdwaras are a house of worship, but they’re also kind of like resource hubs—like rations, health care—for new immigrants, especially those who do not speak English and only speak Panjabi.’ He said that a drop in attendance in Gurdwaras signals a fear of immigration activity means that congregants are not accessing the services, and that can lead to serious outcomes for their health (earlier coverage).