Advocates call on feds to step in as B.C. hospital worker faces deportation
Posted November 8, 2022 7:59 pm.
A British Columbia healthcare worker and her family are pleading for help from the federal government as they face deportation.
Claudia Zamorano is a hospital housekeeper and Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU) member at New Westminster’s Royal Columbian Hospital.
She and her family are facing deportation to Mexico, even though their permanent residency application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds has yet to be processed by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada.
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Sanctuary Health, a migrant advocacy group, has called Canada Border Services Agency to suspend the Zamaranos’ deportation that is scheduled for Dec. 19.
Omar Chu with Sanctuary Health says the Zamorano family came to Canada in 2017 fleeing threats of violence from organized crime groups.
“They are terrified of what will happen if they are deported,” he said, adding Claudia’s nine-year-old daughter has spent her entire schooling life in Canada. “The government is planning to uproot that right before Christmas.”
Chu says the advocacy group is hoping to catch the attention of the country’s health ministers, who have held meetings in Vancouver this week.
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“As we have health ministers from across the country meeting, discussing the shortage of healthcare workers that we have, I think it’s really ironic that at the same time, the government is working on removing the healthcare worker and her family,” Chu said.
Over 1,200 people have written letters to the government to express how much the Zamorano family means to them in hopes of halting the deportation process, Chu says.
HEU secretary business manager, Meena Brisard, says Zamorano has been on the frontlines in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She has put herself and her family at risk of contracting COVID for three years to help keep Canadians safe,” Brisard said.
Both HEU and Sanctuary Health are calling on federal health minister, Jean-Yves Duclos to step in and stop the deportation.
