The men are in their 80s and 90s, and none has been convicted of war crimes, but Jewish groups and other ethnic communities that have been subjected to violent persecution want them deported as Nazi "enablers."
"It has been a matter of shame that our survivors must live in the same country as those who have contributed to the suffering," Bernie Farber, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
He was joined by representatives of PAGE-Rwanda, the Armenian National Committee of Canada and the Roma Community Centre of Toronto in calling on Immigration Minister Diane Finley to deport six elderly Ukrainian men.
Courts have found that they misrepresented their wartime activities when they sought Canadian citizenship or residency in Canada.
"As the decades have passed, time and natural death have been far more effective, I should say, than government in dealing with such individuals. Now only a handful of Nazi enablers remain in this country," Mr. Farber said.
"They are the men without whom the Nazis could not have done their bloody work. And when they came to Canada to start new lives, they lied about their wartime activities in order to gain the precious privilege of Canadian citizenship."
The six men are Helmut Oberlander, 82; Vladimir Katriuk, 85; Wasyl Odynsky, 83; Jacob Fast, 96; Jura Skomatchuk, 85; and Josef Furman, 86. During their court hearings, most of the men said they were forced as teenagers to help the Nazis.
Two, Mr. Katriuk and Mr. Fast, are alleged to have been Nazi collaborators. Mr. Odynsky, Mr. Skomatchuk and Mr. Furman are alleged to have been guards at SS forced-labour camps. And Mr. Oberlander is alleged to have been a translator for a Nazi killing unit. None have been proven to have committed atrocities directly.
Mr. Oberlander has been the subject of three separate investigations, his lawyer Eric Hafemann said on Tuesday. All three concluded that there was no evidence to link him to war crimes, he added.
The German government, which conducted the first investigation in 1970, "came to the conclusion that he had been forcibly taken at the age of 17 from his home and given various assignments as an interpreter," Mr. Hafemann said.
Similar rulings were found in regard to the other men.
But Ian Sadinski of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa told the press conference that Canada should offer no haven to alleged enablers of genocide.
"Killing machines depend not only on the hands that guide them but also on the cogs that move and mesh and yield death as their product," he said.
Miloslav Slavchev of the Roma Community Centre agreed.
"The Roma community will support these actions, even though [the men are]not charged with war crimes," Mr. Slavchev said. "They have lied to immigration when they have come to Canada and they have applied for [residency]and they have lied."
Jean-Paul Nyilinkwaya, the director of media and public relations for PAGE-Rwanda, said "the only reason why you lie about your past is because you have something to hide."
If Canada does nothing about these men, said Mr. Farber, "what does that say about those war criminals who today are looking for safe haven? Why would they not look at Canada?"