'Our wings have been clipped': Quebec's 'guardian angels' in health care face deportation

Sitting in his modest Quebec City apartment, 29-year-old Idriss Moussa Souni lets out a sigh. 

Beside him are a few boxes, a well-worn sofa, hastily hung curtains and a microwave on the floor.

The plain decor evokes the uncertainty and anxiety about his deportation that is inexorably approaching.

Souni is one of thousands of Quebec asylum seekers who cared for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic in health-care establishments who have been refused permanent residency under a federal pathway set up to thank them. Others have been waiting for years.

The Chadian security guard says he goes to work every day at the Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec with a knot in his stomach. He's held this position for nearly seven years.

"I feel completely abandoned. As if everything we've given isn't enough," said Souni. "I can't plan ahead, I live day to day without knowing what the end of the tunnel will be." 

Souni arrived in Canada in 2018, seeking asylum, and says he played a key role at the hospital he works at during some of the toughest moments of the pandemic. 

"I was carrying the bodies [of the deceased]. We were taking them out of the rooms and bringing them to the cold room for the coroner," he said, still shaken by the multiple tasks he performed to make the facility safer. 

From disinfecting rooms and hallways to assisting nurses and orderlies, his duties went far beyond the role of a security guard. 

"I gave everything I could. Some chose to stay home, to take government assistance, but we were there. We took all those risks," said Souni.

"We allowed those who came to save lives to do it safely. No one agrees to come and work in an environment that isn't safe. We had to make doctors want to come." 

'Thrown away like garbage'

The federal government, in collaboration with Quebec, put in place a temporary program between December 14, 2020 and August 31, 2021 to provide a pathway to permanent residency for asylum seekers whose requests for status were pending or failed and who worked in the health-care system during the pandemic.

According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), out of the 13,230 regularization requests filed, 9,205 have been approved, including 3,601 in Quebec.

But 3,515 claimants were rejected by Ottawa and 291 files by Quebec. The federal government processes individual applications while the provincial government processes files that may include several people.

At the time of the program, Souni was one of many "guardian angels" — the nickname given to essential workers in health-care establishments during the first wave of COVID-19.

But the dream of regularization vanished, due to the criteria imposed by the governments. 

To be eligible for permanent residency, asylum seekers must:

• Have provided direct patient care.
• Have worked at least 120 hours in a health-care establishment between March 13, 2020 and August 14, 2020.
• Have at least six months of professional experience in a health-care institution.
• Have applied by the deadline. 

The first criterion immediately excluded many workers like Souni, who were unable to prove that their actual missions went well beyond their initial mandate.

"Our wings have been clipped, it's a total disappointment. Everything we've given has been forgotten," he said. 

And Souni is not the only one in this situation.

Didier, an Ivorian security guard who has worked in several seniors' residences and at the Pierre-Boucher Hospital in Longueuil, Que., says he doesn't have a job nor status. 

Radio-Canada agreed to conceal his identity as he is now an undocumented immigrant and is on Canadian soil illegally.

"I helped the nurses, I helped screen the Canadians. But at the last minute, I was thrown out like an outsider," said Didier.

"We were told we did a remarkable job, we were nicknamed 'guardian angels,' but after the end of the pandemic, we were thrown away like garbage bags." 

Maryse Poisson, the director of social initiatives at the Welcome Collective, says she's witnessed "unfair situations." 

"Some people are devastated and on the brink of collapse," she said. "These are people who play a very important role in our health-care system." 

One of the people Poisson is helping is a Nigerian orderly who also worked during the pandemic. She now faces deportation.

Even though the woman's job fell squarely within the scope of the occupations accepted by the program, she didn't accumulate enough hours during the first wave.

And for a very simple reason.

"She gave birth and therefore stopped working during that period. Yet, throughout the rest of the pandemic, she was there," said Poisson. 

A 'very slow' regularization process

Over four years after the launch of the temporary policy, Radio-Canada has learned that 380 people, including 225 in Quebec, are still waiting to obtain their permanent residency through the program. 

IRCC says "the complexity of the application as well as the capacity and resources available [of the ministry and its processing centres]" are some of the various factors explaining these delays.

Marjorie Villefranche, director of the Maison d'Haïti, one of the organizations mandated to help asylum seekers with these procedures, describes the "very slow" process as an "obstacle course." 

"Even when they tell you, 'Yes, it's OK, your status will be regularized,' you still have to wait for a very long time," she said.

Souni, for his part, reflects on the past few years, with little hope for the future.

"During the pandemic, everyone was afraid of catching COVID. It was killing people. We had to get to work, we needed people willing to die for Canada," he said.

"There were thanks, but that doesn't take away the feeling of being deported, of abandoning everything we've accomplished here. We feel forgotten."