It’s almost the end for Janilee Cadongonan, thanks to a Canadian immigration system that not only doesn’t believe her, but can’t keep its own story straight.
The 27-year-old Duncan woman’s tale hit the news in March. Canada was booting her back to the Philippines, all because of what she insists was an innocent paperwork error.
Cadongonan came to Canada in 2006, joining her mother and Canadian-born stepfather. She proved a solid addition to the country, toiling at three jobs at once — scrubbing toilets in a resort, waiting tables, working in Superstore.
In 2008, she flew to the Philippines to marry her boyfriend, Allan Reyes. The waiting period for a marriage licence would have extended beyond her three-week stay, but they were told they could expedite the process by signing a form, one that turned out to say they had been living common-law for at least five years, which they had not.
Later that year, when the error was spotted by Canadian authorities vetting Reyes’s application to join his new wife in Canada, the couple was accused of claiming a common-law relationship to advance their wedding date. In Ottawa’s eyes that made the marriage a sham, which made Cadongonan’s application to sponsor Reyes a sham. Acting on lawyers’ advice, the couple had their marriage annulled. Not good enough: Canada accused Cadongonan of misrepresentation, stripped her of her permanent residence status, ordered her out of the country.
Now, having exhausted the appeal process, she is due to fly to the Philippines on May 2. She has no immediate family there; her relationship with Reyes did not last.
In March, Nanaimo-Cowichan MP Jean Crowder urged Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to intervene, but Kenney’s response this week brought no joy. He came up with a whole new reason for bouncing Cadongonan: She was being expelled not because she hadn’t been living common law with Reyes, but because she had.
It seems that while going through the immigration process, Reyes indicated that he and Cadongonan had lived together from 2004 to 2006. If true, that could have affected her admission to Canada in 2006 as a dependent of her mother. Cadongonan, who maintains she didn’t even meet Reyes until 2005, says she thinks he came up with the story to strengthen his own immigration case. He, his mother and Cadongonan’s now-deceased grandmother later swore that Reyes and Cadongonan had never lived together, but Immigration concluded those statements were self-serving, figured boyfriend and girlfriend hid their cohabitation to enhance her chances of coming here.
Crowder hopes to go back to Kenney early next week with more evidence supporting Cadongonan’s version.
Time is running out, though. Vancouver immigration consultant Ron Liberman has asked the Canada Border Services Agency to stay Cadongonan’s removal pending a hearing into her application to remain here on compassionate grounds. Failing that, he may ask the courts to step in.
It seems the government is going to an awful lot of trouble to chase out a polite, shy young woman who has spent the past 61Ú2 years as a taxpaying, problem-free resident of Canada. Her parents, job, Canadian boyfriend and future are all here. She isn’t hurting anyone.
Oh, if only Ottawa was as committed to deporting criminals and terrorists. We read Friday of officialdom’s feeble attempts to rid the country of Raed Jaser, who was allowed to stay in Canada in 2004 despite fraud-related convictions and is now accused of plotting to attack a Via Rail train.
That was reminiscent of the story of Ahmed Ressam, the Millennium Bomber nabbed in Port Angeles as he exited the Coho ferry from Victoria with a trunkload of explosives with which he planned to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on the last night of 1999. Ressam, an Algerian, arrived in Canada in 1994 with a French passport that was found to be fake. He claimed refugee status, was rejected, but was still allowed to live in Montreal, surviving on welfare and theft before going for jihadist training in Afghanistan, then coming back to Canada.
As for Cadongonan, she is distraught. The struggle has exhausted her family emotionally and financially. With the full might of the Canadian government arrayed against her, there’s little more she can do.
“Nobody believes what I say.”
