Keep Kimberly Rivera Here

Three months into her fifteen moth mission, Kimberly Rivera, a gate guard in Baghdad, was granted two weeks leave from the U.S. war in Iraq. She had requested leave after finding herself haunted by the fates of the young children there, forever traumatized by the war. Rivera, a mother herself and the first U.S. female Iraq war resister, then drove to Canada from her Fort Carson, Columbus home with her family, in January 2007. She had hoped to gain refugee staus once in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

She does not regret leaving the war in Iraq at all, even though she may be charged with desertion if forced home. "I came here in my belief, I'll leave here in it as well." she said yesterday in a press conference after being told by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, that her and her family had twenty days to leave the country or risk deportation.

Currently about two hundred American war resisters are said to be living in Canada. Please sign this petition to help make Kimberly Rivera one of them.