After the Canadian government has suspended the deportation order issued against Filipino COVID-19 frontline health worker Carlo Escario following a public outcry, a call for Escario to stay in Canada “for good” or after his second dose of Pfizer vaccine is growing. In a new petition, the outcry to let “healthcare hero” Escario stay in Canada keeps on growing and reached to more than 42-thousand signatures as of this writing.
Escario’s lawyer Natalie Domazet said that the government did the right thing by cancelling the removal of their client, Carlo Escario. Domazet also reiterates that as a front-line healthcare worker, Escario’s circumstances deserved compassionate consideration from the onset.
Opposition NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was among high profile Canadian politicians asking Canada to reconsider the decision to deport Escario, who had been working directly with COVID-19 patients in the intensive-care unit at Toronto General Hospital since the start of the pandemic.
A petition urging Marco Mendicino, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, had received more than 8,000 signatures.
Escario arrived in Toronto in 2007 as a live-in caregiver and became a permanent resident in 2010. But his immigrant status was revoked in 2013 because failed to declare he was married and had a child in the Philippines. Escario had admitted to immigration officials that he married his now-estranged wife while waiting to come to Canada under the Live-In-Caregiver Program.
Escario said that he failed to declare the marriage because he feared that it would cause further processing delays to his work permit application, which records show took more than 18-months to be approved.
Being deported would’ve meant that Escario would’ve missed his second doze of the Pfizer vaccine, which is not yet offered in the Philippines. But thousands of Canadians felt that Escario should be allowed to stay because of his services to the community, specially during the pandemic.
