Airdrie nanny facing flight home to Philippines gets reprieve from Ottawa
Teresita Seradilla's residency request turned down over error in earlier caregiver application
A Filipina nanny who was ordered to leave the country by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been given a reprieve.
Ottawa issued Teresita Seradilla a visa to work as a live-in caregiver, but when she applied for Canadian residency the application was turned down.
It turned out the 40-year-old nanny was supposed to have left the country before applying for the caregiver visa.
Seradilla was booked to fly back to the Philippines on Wednesday night.
But just a few hours after her story aired on CBC News, Seradilla received a call from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada acknowledging an error had been made.
"I'm shaking, and thankful,” she said.
Seradilla supports her family in the Phillipines and said her father will be unable to receive dialysis without the money she sends home each month.
"I'm very grateful I have the opportunity to work here and help my family back home.”
The Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada says it processes more than a million applications a year and it tries to correct errors quickly.
Immigration lawyer Raj Sharma is now asking for an extension on Seradilla’s visa and has applied for a judicial review.
“If you can't find it in your heart to grant humanitarian and compassionate relief to a nanny who takes care of children in Canada, who sends money back home to support her two children there, and of course pay for her father's dialysis, then it beggars the imagination when an officer will grant relief.”
Sharma says the maze of regulations is difficult to navigate.
"You're always going to have this. It's a human system and there's the fragility of the human system,” he said.