Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada adjudicator Daphne Shaw-Dyck today upheld federal Conservative Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney's order to kick the three Filipino amigos - Ermie Zotomayor, Antonio Laroya and Arnel (Arnisito) Gaviola - out of Canada and exclude them from re-entering the country for a year unless they receive "special written permission."
They have no right to appeal.
"The three men had their admissibility hearings" in Winnipeg" and the Minister's allegation of the men failing to comply with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act were found to be correct," said Melissa Anderson, senior communications advisor in Vancouver of the board's Western Region office for British Columbia and the Prairies.
"All three were issued exclusion orders," said Anderson. "An exclusion order is a type of removal order. The persons concerned must leave Canada and cannot return for a period of one year unless they have special written permission. After that one-year period they would have the right to apply to re-enter Canada again, and could do so providing they were found to meet the entry requirements."
The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada hearings in Winnipeg got under way Feb. 9, but were adjourned until today to hear evidence from three Winnipeg-based Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers who were in Thompson last spring watching the three temporary Filipino workers, dubbed "the Three Amigos, " from St. Lawrence Catholic Church parish, long before they were in violation of the 90 days' grace period allowed to have their work permit status restored by their new employer here, the board heard last month.
Lawyer David Matas' motion Feb. 9 to compel the three agents to testify was granted by Shaw-Dyck.
As an adjudicator, Shaw-Dyck has been involved at various stages of some of the most high-profile cases before the board in recent months, including that of Hollywood actor Randy Quaid and his wife, Evi, who sought asylum in Canada in Vancouver, claiming they were afraid Hollywood "star whackers" will have them murdered.
Evi Quaid, who whose father was born in Canada, received her Canadian citizenship last month and has applied to sponsor her husband for residency. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada has dropped proceedings against them. The couple was arrested in Vancouver last October on a warrant issued in Santa Barbara, Calif., where they face charges of felony vandalism.
While Canada Border Services initially said Randy Quaid was inadmissible to Canada because of the charges he faced in the United States, the American charges did not constitute extraditable offences under the Canada-United States extradition treaty, so the agency withdrew after looking at the files sent to them by American prosecutors.
Shaw-Dyck was also initially involved in the Vancouver case of the man who entered Canada and made international headlines for boarding an Air Canada flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver last Oct. 29 wearing a silicone mask that made him look decades older.
Zotomayor, 45, Laroya, 45, and Gaviola, 42, were arrested here last June 24 by officers from the Canadian Border Services Agency and held in custody at the RCMP detachment for eight hours for not having valid work permits.
Both Broadway Disciples United Church and New Hope Community Church of the Nazarene in Winnipeg have been active in helping the men in their fight against deportation.
Parishioners at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church on Cree Road in Thompson - and many others - petitioned the federal government in December to block the possible removal of the three Filipino men who attended church here from last February until their arrests last June.
The three men, devout Roman Catholics, say they were working in Canada to send money back home to their families living lives of grinding poverty in the Philippines. All three had new jobs lined up in Thompson with another employer.
Last Dec. 20, Legal Aid Manitoba approved their application for assistance and Matas unsuccessfully sought "restoration of status" and "temporary residence" permits for the trio that would have allow them to stay and work in Canada.
Petitions with more than 1,300 signatures urging Kenney to let them stay in Canada on compassionate grounds were faxed to Ottawa.
The three men say they were recruited last February to work at a local gas station here in Thompson by an employer who promised to get their paperwork in order, but never did.
They left their families in the Philippines to escape poverty and come to Canada in 2007 under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to work in a gas station in High Prairie, Alberta. Although it is illegal in Alberta for recruiters to charge workers a fee for finding employment, the three say they were charged $3,000 each by a recruiter to land the jobs.
After almost two years of working at the High Prairie gas station, they were laid off. They received work permits for employment at a restaurant in Peace River, Alberta where they lived together in a mobile home. But as their third year in Canada approached, they knew their time under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program was drawing to a close because the program only allows workers to stay for a maximum of four years, after which they must leave the country and not return to the program until after another four years.
They asked their restaurant employer if they could be sponsored under Alberta's Provincial Nominee Program but the employer couldn't help them with that, so they looked for other jobs.
When they were laid off, they had 90 days to restore their work permits but were ineligible for benefits from Employment Insurance (EI) to which they'd contributed.
After a friend found a position at a gas station in Thompson, and because of the reputation for success of the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP) in helping skilled workers become future permanent residents after six months of work, they headed east to Thompson.
Steve Ashton, Thompson's NDP MLA and Manitoba's minister of infrastructure and transportation, said here in April 2008 the annual number of provincial nominees in Manitoba had gone from about 2,000 to 10,000 and the province could use as many as 20,000 such new immigrants a year.
Ashton, himself an immigrant who came to Canada from the United Kingdom in 1967 with his family, noted that his dad was unemployed when the family arrived in Toronto 43 years ago and would never be admitted into the country under the current point system or proposed immigration changes.
"Immigration is not just about labour markets," Ashton said in 2008. "It is also about families."
Zotomayor, Laroya and Gaviola say their new employer here insisted they start working at once and promised that the work permits would soon follow. Zotomayor, Laroya and Gaviola went to work in February for $10 an hour, sharing an apartment in Thompson, and sending most of their pay home to their families in the Philippines. Zotomayor, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering, says he's been advised not to identify the employer.
After waiting for three months, the employer still failed to obtain the new work permits as promised, they say. Even after asking their employer repeatedly about the status of their papers, the work permits never came. This caused the workers to be "out of status."
They said they were told by their new employer in Thompson he'd take care of the labour market opinion and other documents needed to restore their work permits. Meanwhile, Canada Border Services Agency investigators have declared they'd been watching them work in March and April, but didn't advise the men on what was legally required of them. Their 90 days' grace expired last May, and the Filipino workers were arrested in June.
After their June 24 arrests, they were released, but not allowed to work and all their identification cards were confiscated, including their Philippine passports.
After seeking the advice of a Philippine consular official, they paid another $4,500 in total to an immigration consultant in Calgary to help them, not knowing they cannot work while awaiting the outcome of their Immigration and Refugee Board hearing.
As of 2009, more than 280,000 foreign workers were in Canada, according to Citizen and Immigration Canada statistics. From 2007 to 2009 alone, almost 50,000 foreign workers from the Philippines entered Canada via the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, says Diwa Marcelino, of Migrante-Canada in Winnipeg.
Migrante-Canada is an alliance of Filipino migrant and immigrant organizations in Canada. It has member organizations in Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Alberta and British Columbia. Migrante-Canada is a chapter of Migrante International, a global alliance of Filipinos abroad with a presence in North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
The chronic unemployment and lack of opportunities in the Philippines has resulted in the daily exodus of approximately 3,900 Filipinos workers who find jobs outside the country, according to the Quezon City, Philippines-based IBON Foundation, a non-profit research-education-information and advocacy organization set up in 1978 to serve marginalized sectors. Many of these university-educated workers find employment in remote communities doing jobs which locals are unwilling to do, Marcelino says.
The Provencher riding constituency office in Steinbach of Vic Toews, minister of public safety and the Conservative cabinet minister responsible for representing Manitoba's interests in the Harper government in Ottawa, tried unsuccessfully also to help Zotomayor, Laroya and Gaviola with the necessary paperwork to stay in Canada. The riding includes Steinbach, Lac du Bonnet, Altona, Lorette and Pinawa in southeastern Manitoba.
Marcelino says Toews' constituency office in Steinbach helped with the paperwork at the suggestion of an area farmer who needs workers and wants to hire the three men.
In 2009 there were 3,649 foreign workers who entered Manitoba to work in service sector and agricultural jobs to fill the labour shortages in these industries.
After the Winnipeg Free Press ran a story last Nov. 26 on Zotomayor, Laroya and Gaviola, they were kicked out of an apartment the same day, where they had been given shelter by a friend in Winnipeg, by the building superintendent, who saw their photos in the paper, said Marcelino. They spent a couple of nights at the home of Manitoba Culture, Heritage and Tourism Minister Flor Marcelino, who is Diwa Marcelino's mother.
