Cariboo Hill Secondary Grade 9 student Jonathan Newman is leaving on a jet plane and he doesn’t know if he’ll be back again.
The 14-year-old has lived in Canada since age three, making friends in his neighbourhood near the Burnaby Mountain Golf Course and at Scouts, Sperling Elementary and Cariboo Hill Secondary.
But he, his mom and his dad, David Newman, an SFU communications instructor, can’t stay because of problems with their immigration status.
“It’s home, and I don’t want to leave home,” Jonathan told the NOW. “I’d be fine if I was gone for just a year, but anything more than that, I wouldn’t really like that. I’d be away from all my friends who I’ve known for 11 years now.”
Jonathan’s dad, who holds a New Zealand passport like his son, is caught in a catch-22 when it comes to getting permanent residency in Canada under the current express-entry points system.
Newman senior said he can't up his points with a continuing position at SFU – even though he has been working at the university continuously for eight-and-a-half years. He said he is blocked from consideration for permanent positions because of his immigration status.
With the expiry of his post-graduation work permit (Newman finished his PhD at SFU in 2013), he can no longer work in Canada and Jonathan can no longer attend school.
The family is appealing to Minister of Immigration John McCallum through Burnaby North-Seymour MP Terry Beech’s office, hoping the minister will use his discretionary powers to grant the family permanent residency or an invitation to apply on humanitarian and compassionate grounds – so Jonathan can go to Cariboo Hill and the family doesn’t have to pull up its roots in Burnaby.
Newman has a lot of support in SFU’s school of communication, according to lecturer Jody Baker, who has personally written the immigration minister on his behalf.
“He’s had a huge impact on a lot of students here,” Baker said. “He teaches one of the introductory first-year courses, so he’s got a lot of students, and then he teachers a lot of upper-year courses. They’re very small and very intense.”
Baker said he has invited his friends and colleagues in the school of communication to write letters of support.
The communication student union is also behind him.
“Many of us have taken courses with Dr. Newman and have learned valuable things from him,” president Tiana Marconato told the NOW in an email. “As a student union, we’ll be writing a letter to the minister of immigration urging him to exercise his discretionary powers to grant Dr. Newman and his family permanent resident status so he can continue to teach his courses at SFU. We will also be encouraging students to spread the word and make as much noise as possible on our social media channels.”
The latest news from the immigration ministry is that it is working on changes to its express entry program, but there’s no guarantee Newman would have enough points under the new system either.
“It is premature to comment on possible system changes, timing or whether or not Mr. Newman would be impacted,” reads an emailed statement from communications advisor Nancy Chan.
For Newman, the process has been frustrating.
“There is some dissonance in Canadian immigration policy,” he said in an email to the NOW, “where on the one hand over 28,000 Syrian refugees can be accepted into the country at relatively short notice, and yet highly qualified scholars with years of living and working here (and ongoing work) are forced to leave because they don’t fit the narrow requirements of the points scheme.”
But that’s comparing apples and oranges, according to Chan.
“Canada resettles refugees to save lives and to provide stability to those fleeing persecution who have no hope of relief,” she wrote. “Canada’s resettlement programs are respected internationally because they
provide permanent residence as a long-term solution. Economic immigration programs, such as those under Express Entry which Mr. Newman is seeking to use as a means of obtaining permanent residence, are in place to select immigrants for their skills and ability to contribute to Canada’s economy.”
As for the likelihood the minister would step in and use his discretionary powers in Newman’s case, Chan said ministerial discretionary powers are only used in exceptional cases and each case is considered on its own merit.
Currently in Canada on a visitor’s record, Newman has started moving his family’s belongings into storage. He will fly with Jonathan on Aug. 2 to Vietnam, where they will join David’s wife and Jonathan’s mom, Hien Nguyen, who is currently there to be close to her ailing, elderly mother.
“Hopefully it’s only temporary and we’ll be coming back,” Newman said.
