Advocacy Groups Say Deportation Order Is 'Unacceptable'

Volume 2, Issue No. 63

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . .

 Our latest as of Thursday, May 13, 2021 

~ A Filipino health worker at a local hospital in Toronto gets a temporary stay of his deportation today upon the intervention of some members of Parliament and on his personal appeal to be allowed in the city until he gets a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The hemodialysis assistant fears he could contract the disease once he's back in the Philippines. Three Filipino advocacy groups denounce the deportation order as an "unacceptable treatment of workers" under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

 

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DEPORTATION IS HALTED

Filipino Health Worker Gets a Reprieve

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

TORONTO - A Filipino health worker who worried about contracting COVID-19 in the Philippines got a reprieve from his deportation, his lawyer said Thursday.

Carlo Escario, a hemodialysis assistant at Toronto General Hospital since 2014, had made an appeal to postpone his scheduled removal today, May 13, 2021, until he gets his second Pfizer vaccine shot on June 11.

Canada Border Services has agreed to grant the temporary stay until June 22 apparently upon the intervention of "more than one MP (Member of Parliament)," his lawyer, Natalie Domazet, told this reporter.

She said Escario continues to work at Toronto General Hospital in direct contact with COVID-19 patients "despite his own fears of contracting the virus".

At least three Filipino advocacy groups have launched a petition - more than 8,000 have signed as of this writing - demanding that the government of Canada stop the deportation.

"The order to deport Carlo Escario back to the Philippines is yet another example of the Canadian Immigration system’s unacceptable treatment of workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP)," the Magkaisa Centre, the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario, the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance of Ontario, and SIKLAB-ON, said in a press statement.

Escario arrived in Canada in 2007 through the Live-in Caregiver Program and became a permanent resident in 2010. Three years later, authorities invalidated his status after he was found to have misrepresented himself.

"But because Mr. Escario has not included his marital and family status with his now-estranged wife and daughter in his permanent residency application," Magkaisa Centre said, "Citizenship and Immigration Canada is now cruelly and unjustly criminalizing Mr. Escario of 'misrepresentation'."

"We implore you to forgive him, and let him stay so he can continue to serve his community," the signatories to the petition wrote. "This man has proven that he's willing to sacrifice his life in the service of other Canadians".

A news report in the Toronto Star earlier quoted Escario as saying that he was worried about getting COVID in the homeland.

“I am unlikely to receive a Pfizer vaccine on return to the Philippines because the country is primarily administering the Chinese Sinovac and Russian Sputnik vaccines, which worries me," Escario told the newspaper. (Copyright 2021. All Rights Reserved).