Jazmine Rosales is required to appear at YVR on Monday, 11 a.m. to board her flight back home.
But the mother-of-three says she applied — twice — to extend her visitor’s stay as required by law well in advance of the 30-day deadline.
On Sunday, speaking through her husband Juan Inostroza, as she doesn’t speak fluent English, Rosales said she’d received receipts for the $75 she paid immigration officials in January and April for extensions to her stay.
She discovered on June 29 her extension was granted, but that her visa would expire on June 30 — three days after her initial six-month visa had required her to leave.
For several weeks, the couple frantically made daily calls to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
The calls were unsuccessful. The one time they did get a response, Inostroza was on the phone and the immigration official told him to call back with Rosales. None of their phone calls were returned, he said.
On Aug. 6, while on SkyTrain between Scott Road Station and Gateway Station in Surrey, Rosales was stopped by Transit Police conducting fare checks. She couldn’t find her ticket and was asked for identification — her passport.
Inostroza said the officers misidentified that her passport was expired and called Canada Border Services Agency, who apprehended her when they discovered her passport was OK, but found her visa had expired.
“They put chains on her hands,” Inostroza said. “Nobody let me explain her condition or her situation … they took her and moved her to a jail at the airport.”
To the couple’s surprise, at Rosales’ deportation hearing, she was told had she applied for a visa extension in late May, she would have had it approved.
“The officer said it was not necessary to pay two times to extend visa,” he said. “If we paid at the end of May, (and not) for April for this extension, she wouldn’t have problem.”
Citizenship and Immigration Canada officials did not respond by press time.
Original Article
Source: vancouver.24hrs.ca/
Author: Michael Mui
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