She worked on the front lines during COVID-19. Now she could be deported and ripped from her daughter | 24CA News

One yr after the federal authorities vowed to do extra to provide standing to undocumented staff, Canada is urgent ahead with deporting a private assist employee, separating her from her youngster and sending her again to the nation from which she says she ran for her life.

Fatumah Najjuma, a 29-year-old, fled Uganda whereas pregnant in 2018 after she says she was disowned by her household and her life was put at risk for her spiritual and social affiliations.

For three years, she’s labored as a private assist employee in long-term care houses and at folks’s houses, together with in the course of the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a job by which she says she’s discovered that means, regardless of privately going through the phobia of shedding the life she’s constructed within the security of Canada.

“The elderly, they really need our help,” she advised CBC Toronto. “You assist them with doing everything so that they feel normal, like every other person.”

But “normal” is one thing Najjuma hasn’t been in a position to really feel together with her new life on the point of collapse. Despite making use of to keep in Canada on compassionate and humanitarian grounds in March, she faces deportation on Jan. 7. 

“My mental health is worsening every day. I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating… Each day that passes, I get more scared.”

Federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s mandate consists of working to “further explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities.” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says that work is underway, however that it can not touch upon applications or insurance policies underneath growth.

Fraser just lately met with roughly 100 undocumented migrant leaders from across the nation, to listen to straight from them, the division added.

“As we advance our work on further programs, we will continue listening to experts as well as undocumented workers themselves… Until new policies are announced, the existing ones remain in effect,” spokesperson Jeffery MacDonald stated in an announcement.

‘Completely irrational,’ says advocate

That means whereas a change might quickly be coming to ease the trail to everlasting residence for these like Najjuma, she is nonetheless set to be deported to Uganda whereas the specifics are ironed out.

That’s unacceptable to Syed Hussan, government director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, who says his group was advised a call on regularization could be coming this yr.

“It’s completely irrational,” Hussan stated. 

“People are continuing to be ripped apart from their families, mistreated because they don’t have permanent resident status, despite the promise… A policy is being developed and deportations are happening at the same time.”

Najjuma’s deportation date approaches as one other private assist employee and her son who additionally stood to be torn from their Canadian relations lastly obtained their everlasting residence.

Nike Okafor and her son, Sydney, had been in Canada for 19 years and ready on their sponsorship utility to be processed after they had been all of the sudden hit with a deportation order by Canadian Border Services Agency.

As CBC Toronto reported, their nightmare lastly ended final Monday, after they obtained phrase that their everlasting residence utility had been accepted.

But for Hussan, “It’s not about finding exceptional cases, but to take on an unfair and discriminatory system that denies permanent residence to people… then wrenches them apart from their communities and puts them in situations of risk.”

According to the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, there are an estimated half million undocumented folks in Canada, and one other 1.2 million with research and work permits or claiming asylum — many who cannot entry fundamental companies and face exploitation by landlords or at work.

Thousands have been deported or face deportation for the reason that immigration mandate a yr in the past, the group says.

IRCC says tens of hundreds of short-term staff transition to everlasting standing annually. Of the 406,000 overseas nationals who grew to become everlasting residents in 2021, it says practically 169,000 of them transitioned from employee standing.

CBSA says it considers ‘greatest curiosity of the kid’

In an announcement to CBC Toronto, the Canadian Border Services Agency stated it can not touch upon particular person circumstances for privateness causes, however that it has a authorized obligation to take away those that are inadmissible to Canada underneath the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and who’ve removing orders in drive.

“The decision to remove someone from Canada is not taken lightly,” the CBSA stated, including the company solely acts on a removing order “once all legal avenues of recourse have been exhausted.”

Najjuma’s deportation order got here months after she had already submitted a humanitarian and compassionate grounds utility. Humanitarian functions do not routinely cease a deportation until they obtain the primary stage of approval, however Najjuma says her utility remains to be being reviewed. 

Having a Canadian-born youngster additionally does not forestall somebody from being eliminated, the CBSA stated. 

The company says it “always considers the best interest of the child before removing someone,” including a household will be stored collectively by eradicating the kid from Canada too.

That would imply uprooting Najjuma’s three-year-old daughter, Ilham, a Canadian citizen, to a rustic the place her mom says her life too could be endangered. 

Judge cites ‘ethical debt’ owed to front-line staff

Toronto-based lawyer Vakkas Bilsin labored to assist safe everlasting residence for Okafor. While he’s not concerned in Najjuma’s case, the 2 ladies’s tales have a lot in widespread. 

“In my opinion, Ms. Fatumah’s sudden removal from Canada is neither reasonable nor sensible before she receives the final decision on the outstanding humanitarian and compassionate application,” Bilsin stated, including he hopes somebody in authority will hear her story and intervene. 

In reality, in a ruling this yr in opposition to the Immigration Appeal Division, a federal court docket decide indicated candidates who’ve labored as well being care aids or on the entrance strains in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic deserve particular consideration.

“The moral debt owed to immigrants who worked on the front lines to help protect vulnerable people in Canada during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be overstated,” Justice Shirzad Ahmed wrote. 

For now, because the clock ticks and her deportation approaches, Najjuma is making an attempt to stay hopeful.

“All I want is to stay with my daughter, to be with her, to raise her in this country and not anywhere else,” she stated.

“Because this is home.”