VANCOUVER June 22/04 (NNS) -- For 14 years a Honduran couple battled Canada's immigration authorities for the right to live in Canada with their two Canadian-born children.
It is a battle they have finally won.
Vancouver lawyer Catherine Sas, who represented the family at no charge, frequently found herself at odds with the system for doggedly pursuing every avenue of appeal, including eight to the federal court, one to the B.C Supreme Court, and two immigration hearings.
But Sas says it was Immigration Canada that caused unnecessary delays, for example, taking three years to process the most recent application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
And although she lost every decision except the last one she never gave up hope. Her efforts were finally rewarded, when Julio Medina and Jasmin Neira, who now live with their children in Edmonton where he is an ordained church pastor, were recently granted an application for permanent residence to be processed within Canada.
"Your exemption was granted, in part because of the hardship you would face if you had to leave Canada and apply from outside of the country as is usually required," wrote immigration officer Vaughn Leroux, of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, in Edmonton.
To Neira, who works as a bookeeper for a small decorating company in Edmonton, Sas is a savior.
"More than a lawyer, she's a friend, she's a great person," she said in a telephone interview. "We are Christian people. The way I see it, she is an instrument God used to keep us here. Otherwise, I didn't have any hope."
Sas says the case highlights significant achievements that have been made in pleading humanitarian and compassionate cases.
"We never did anything that was not permissable, nor went down any avenue that was a not a legally pursuable option," she adds.
"My response to criticism from judges would be that if the immigration department had looked at this properly in the first place, we wouldn't have had to go through this process."
Sas, mother of two young boys, says her decision to take the case on a pro bono basis, was made for professional, not personal reasons. And in spite of the many setbacks and countless hours involved, she has no regrets.
"This is my passion, my area of expertise," she says. "I felt it was my responsibility as this family's representative to hang in for as long as it takes.
"I can't honestly say that having children makes me more empathetic towards people, but I have always had a strong sense of what is right or wrong, and this family should have been allowed to stay."
Neira's immigration problems began in 1987 when she left Honduras with her own mother and her two siblings. Her mother had married a Canadian and her three children, including Jasmin, were sponsored as dependents. But shortly before they left Honduras, Jasmin married Julio Medina, her childhood sweetheart. This proved to be a mistake because under Canadian law only "dependent, unmarried, minors" would be allowed.
"They were honest people and they admitted to their mistake," Sas notes. "But Canada Immigration's position was that this made them ineligible. Appeals to the Immigration Board on humanitarian and compassionate grounds were filed separately for the young couple, because, as Sas says, "We needed to get as many kicks at the can as we could."
Both were denied. And so began a long series of legal challenges.
In the years that followed, Medina and Neira, still in Canada, started their own family. Son Marlin is now 15 and daughter Jazmin is 12. Both are doing well academically and have been through French immersion.
What ultimately turned things in the family's favor was the Supreme Court of Canada ruling by Mme Justice Heureux-Dube (Baker versus Canada 1999) that compels the government to consider the interests of Canadian children when deciding the fate of their parents.
"We had never had a pronouncement like that before," Sas says. "And it came from the highest court in the land."
"In this case, we had two Canadian children who were faced with the prospect of being returned to a country they had never been to."
Sas says the alternative would be for the parents to return to Honduras leaving their children here.
And she adds: "In my submission, neither alternative is in the best interests of the children."
Sas does not agree that the Baker decision, as some immigration critics allege, "opens the floodgates" to anybody who enters Canada and has children.
To Sas, winning her case was about tenacity and creativity, although she wishes it had been dealt with differently. "Our existing policy has lots of flexibility," she says. "We need to use that flexibility. We need to be able to assess and weigh and consider all the circumstances that affect children.
"We look for ways to say no, rather than ways to really consider what is in our best interests for the children in the true sense of what that phrase represents."