Benefiting Canada

"Your submissions were reviewed and the decisions regarding Jazmine's medical inadmissibility remain unchanged."
Canadian Immigration official

"It's difficult. I've sacrificed a lot."
"As she [her daughter] grows up, I miss a lot of things."
Karen Talosig, Filipina personal care worker,Vancouver

Karen Talosig has worked in Canada as a live-in caregiver since 2008. She applied for permanent residence but was recently denied because her 14-year-old daughter (pictured in 2008) in the Philippines is deaf and the government has judged that she would place excessive demand on the health care system.   Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider , SUN

Entree to Canada for many impoverished young women from the Philippines looking for a better life for themselves and their children, means long absences from their children. They leave their dependent children in the care of a husband, or with their own parents to look after them in the absence of their mother. Their mother has obtained a work permit enabling them to labour in Canada as personal care workers or attendants in the hope that this will fast-track them to obtain permanent residency status.

With that status gained, they are then able to sponsor their family members to come to Canada to live with them. And they will all -- the successful applicants and their family members -- eventually become Canadian citizens. Their presence in Canada represents a boon for the country, for they are hard-working, honest, dependable people who want nothing better than an assured future for their children.

The letter of rejection that Karen Talosig received from Citizenship and Immigration Canada resulted from the fact that her 14-year-old daughter is deaf. That, according to immigration officials, Jazmine would need special education funding amounting to $91,500 over a five-year period, imposing on the public system an excessive demand.

But it would seem that someone didn't do their homework on the issue. Due diligence would have discovered that the host school district of Burnaby is prepared to accommodate the young girl within their existing budget, having no requirement for an additional sum on the public purse in order to meet Jazmine's educational needs.

Karen Talosig arrived in Canada in 2008, through the live-in caretaker program.

In 2010 she applied for permanent residency for herself and her daughter, informing immigration officials that Jazmine is deaf, and receiving no intimation that this would pose a problem. Jazmine's father died when she was eight months old, and she lives with her grandparents in the Philippines. A three-hour trip each way to a boarding school for the deaf is where she lives during the week.

Her grandparents confine her mostly to the house out of fear for her safety. They are themselves incapable of communicating with her other than by writing. "Almost every day she says to me, 'I'm bored, Mom', because nobody talks to her", explained her mother. Her employer in Kitsilano has supported her throughout the process of trying to obtain status in Canada.

The B.C. School for the Deaf is funded by the government of British Columbia. The district, according to an assistant superintendent at the Burnaby school district, would have no need to apply for new funding to add one more student. This is an unfortunate instance where the federal bureaucracy has failed to adequately understand its obligations in administering their own program.

Leaving Canada in danger of losing a valuable citizen, and leaving Karen Talosig, a vulnerable person in need of recognition, with a disappointing outcome to her gamble in aspiring to achieve opportunity, despite her tremendous personal sacrifice.