Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Jack Knox: Duncan woman an unlikely candidate for expulsion from Canada

Janilee Cadongonan has bought a ticket to fly to the Philippines on April 14. She hopes she doesn’t have to use it.
A3-0323-Cadongonan-bw.jpg
After more than six years in Canada, Duncan resident Janilee Cadongonan, 27, faces deportation to her native Philippines due to what she calls an innocent clerical error.

Janilee Cadongonan has bought a ticket to fly to the Philippines on April 14.

She hopes she doesn’t have to use it.

The Duncan woman’s story appeared here a couple of weeks ago: She is being expelled from Canada, her home for 6 1/2 years, because of what she says was an innocent paperwork error.

Despite a last-ditch flurry from supporters who believe Ottawa is treating her unjustly, the 27-year-old stands to be torn from her family and sent back to a country where she has no immediate relations, no job, no future.

“I’m really stressed out,” she says. No kidding.

It’s a case that baffles even those familiar with the immigration system, including her member of Parliament and a Montreal lawyer whose client was allowed to remain in Canada despite being in the same circumstances. They think Ottawa is swinging a sledgehammer at a fly.

Cadongonan arrived in Canada in 2006, sponsored by her mother, Anita, who had married retired Duncan millworker Edward Stanko in 2002.

In 2008, Cadongonan returned to the Philippines to marry her boyfriend, Allen Reyes. Upon applying for a marriage licence, they found it came with a waiting period that would have extended beyond her three-week stay. She says the clerk of the judge who married them said they could be wed if they filled out a form as an alternative, which they did.

What they signed was a form declaring they had been living common-law for five years. Obviously, they had not, since she was in Canada and he in the Philippines. Cadongonan says she didn’t realize what she had signed until it was pointed out by authorities vetting her application to sponsor Reyes’ immigration to Canada.

The couple immediately had the marriage annulled and Cadongonan withdrew her sponsorship application, but Citizenship and Immigration Canada accused her of misrepresentation nonetheless. She lost her permanent resident status and was ordered out of Canada.

She appealed, but the Immigration and Refugee Board’s appeal division ruled it simply wasn’t credible that Cadongonan and Reyes weren’t aware of what they were signing. More likely was that she wanted a marriage certificate before leaving the Philippines.

Cheryl Buckley disagrees with that conclusion. After reading Cadongonan’s story, the immigration lawyer called from Quebec to say she had a client with an identical tale: The woman unwittingly signed the form after being misled by a Philippine clerk. The only difference is that Immigration didn’t try to throw Buckley’s client out of Canada; she just had to remarry her husband legally.

And, contrary to the appeal division’s findings, it’s dead easy to be fooled by the Philippine form, a busy document loaded with tiny boxes to be ticked, Buckley said.

Even if Cadongonan was, technically, guilty of misrepresentation, Buckley can’t figure out why Immigration came down on her so hard. It’s not as though she had anything to gain, was trying to hide a criminal past or sneak into the country. She was already here legally, living with her mother and stepfather, toiling away at Duncan’s Real Canadian Superstore, planning to train as a health-care worker. In the Philippines, she’ll have no one; her relationship with Reyes didn’t stand the test of time and distance.

“It’s a very serious thing to take away someone’s permanent residency,” Buckley said. “It’s usually for criminality.

“This doesn’t make any sense. This is overkill.”

Others are similarly offended. Hundreds have signed an online “Allow Janilee Cadongonan to stay in Canada” petition at change.org.

Nanaimo-Cowichan MP Jean Crowder appreciates the sentiment, but says online campaigns bear no weight in Ottawa. Better to e-mail Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office directly or sign paper petitions, she says.

Crowder is among those who find Cadongonan’s predicament unfair. She has taken her concerns to Kenney.

“I hand-delivered a letter to the minister and he said he would look into it.”

Vancouver immigration consultant Ron Liberman has also asked Kenney to intervene on behalf of Cadongonan, a shy, polite woman who hardly fits the image of a predatory alien out to take advantage of soft-touch Canada.

“I just feel very sorry for her,” Liberman says. “She doesn’t seem to be the sort of person the government would want to throw out of Canada.”