Toronto
17 years and still waiting – a caregiver’s elusive dream
By Ted Alcuitas
She will be 61 next month – 17 years after she arrived in Canada as a caregiver but she is still not reunited with her family, a problem caused by a bungling immigration bureaucracy, according to a Toronto Star story.
She was 44 years old when Marcelina Gilles, a nurse, came to Toronto from the Philippines under the federal government’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). The program gives access to permanent resident status after they met the minimum two-year live-in employment hours.
“ When will I be able to reunite with my family here?” a tearful Gilles asks a Star reporter as she relates her harrowing struggle to bring her own family as she dreamed she would achieve – a dream shared by many lured to come to this country by promises of family sponsorship.
In 1999 her children Michelle, Joshua and Anicee were just 11, 10 and 8.
Now they are 28, 27 and 25, and all three are parents themselves — and she’s still fighting.
“Marcelina has been trapped in different sets of rules that have all worked against her,” said Gilles’ immigration lawyer, Patricia Wells, who has been representing her since 2006. “The delay is not her fault. There are no good reasons why the processing should have taken so long.”
Although she finally became a citizen last year, her epic battle with Canadian officials drags on with her husband, three children and three grandchildren still waiting back home.
“I came to Canada so my family could join me and have a better future. I have always been a good worker, caring for Canadians. I’ve never been on government assistance,” said Gilles, who has cared for both children and the elderly in her role as a caregiver.
Stumbling block after stumbling block
After applying for permanent residency in 2002, her application was rejected because her husband, Lolito Bonifacio, was diagnosed with chronic renal failure and did not pass the medical exam.
She continued to work in Canada to support her family until 2006, when her work permit expired. However, she was allowed to remain here while her permanent residence application under humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) grounds was being processed.
It took the immigration department five years to finally issue Gilles her permanent status in 2011, which would allow her to sponsor her family to Canada.
“The live-in caregiver program automatically included all family members, but the H&C application can’t include anyone else. Just the H&C processing took Marcelina five years,” Wells told The Star.
“She has been waiting for the processing of the sponsorship ever since.
In the meantime, her children have all aged out (and can no longer be considered dependants).”
Under changes to the law by the former Conservative government in 2014, children must be 18 or younger to be considered dependants (reduced from 21).
While family sponsorship applications now take 16 months on average to process, Gilles’ application has been in the system for three years.
To try to meet the income threshold to sponsor her family — her husband, three kids and three grandchildren — Gilles said she had worked 78 hours a week until December, when the husband of the elderly couple she cared for passed away.
The immigration department noted Gilles included seven dependants on her application, though her income could only support herself and three dependants. To sponsor seven family members, the sponsor must make $80,153 a year. Gilles made roughly $63,000 annually in the few past years.
“The department contacted Ms Gilles and informed her that her income was only sufficient to support a family of four. She was also told that four of the dependants on her applications were likely ineligible to be sponsored as they no longer met the department’s definition of a dependant,” department spokesperson Remi Lariviere said in an email.
A LONG WAIT TO IMMIGRATE
Here’s a look at the current immigration processing times for different types of applications:
51 months: The time it takes just to assess if a sponsor in Canada is eligible to financially support parents and grandparents. After that, applicants remain in the queue for years, waiting to be called for medical and criminal checks by visa posts overseas.
26 months: The time it takes to evaluate if the relationship between a Canadian sponsor and his/her foreign spouse in Canada is legitimate and whether he/she is admissible on health, criminal and security grounds.
47 months: The time it takes foreign live-in caregivers to have their permanent residence applications processed after they fulfill the 24 months, or 3,900 hours, of full-time live-in employment required to submit an application. Their spouses and children can join them only when the permanent residence application is approved.
38 months: The time it takes for immigration officials in Canada to decide if there are justifiable humanitarian and compassionate reasons that people who have been turned down — usually failed refugee claimants, non-status individuals and people ineligible for other immigration channels — should be allowed to become permanent residents in Canada.
170 days: The time it takes to renew a permanent resident card, a travel document that allows immigrants who are not yet citizens to return to Canada. The card must be renewed every five years for immigrants to maintain their permanent status.
36 months: The time it takes to process “non-routine” citizenship applications that require applicants to fill out a residency questionnaire and document the exact dates and time spent outside of Canada to ensure they have been physically in Canada for four of the six years prior to submitting their application. Those between 14 and 64 years old must pass a language test and citizenship exam.
Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada