Press Conference: Refugee Story and Gain Citizenship

press conference: Those critics are conflating a standard refugee story with deliberate acts of omission used to gain citizenship through fraudulent declarations, he added. "It disappointing to see people spreading misinformation and trying to torque up an issue that simply isn't important," Trudeau said, according to CTV. Monsef grew up in Peterborough, Ont. after fleeing Afghanistan with her mother and sisters, and was elected just over a year ago. Speaking at a press conference nearly a year to the day after he and his cabinet were sworn in, Trudeau defended Monsef, the minister for democratic institutions, and said it common for people from conflict zones to be unclear about where, precisely, they were born. "This is a situation in which people are conflating for political reasons the very real situation that so many refugees face - of fleeing from conflict situations where there is not always perfect clarity on which side of a border one is born on or the conditions in which one is raised," Trudeau said. In September, the Globe and Mail revealed she was actually born in Mashhad, Iran, just across the border from Herat, where she thought she was born. Monsef said she was upset with her mother for not telling her sooner, but that Iran didn't consider her to be a citizen since her parents were Afghan. Monsef knew she had spent part of her childhood in Iran, but has always said she was Afghan-born. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.