A New Westminster family’s bid to stay in Canada is getting community support at an event this weekend.
People from across the Lower Mainland will be gathering at St. James Anglican Church in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on Saturday (Nov. 26) to send Christmas cards to Minister of Immigration Sean Fraser, “reminding him of the holiday spirit,” as a press release puts it.
The holiday spirit in question is a bid to stave off a deportation order affecting Claudia Zamorano, her husband Andres Liberato Bazan and their nine-year-old daughter Evangeline, plus Bazan’s brother, Isaias Liberato Bazan, and mother Leticia Bazan Porto.
All the family members will be deported to Mexico Dec. 19 if nothing changes.
They could be ordered out of Canada despite having a current application for permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds that has yet to be processed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
A number of organizations — including the Hospital Employees’ Union, of which Zamorano is a member, and the grassroots migrant justice group Sanctuary Health — have taken up the family’s cause, asking Fraser to intervene and have the Canada Border Services Agency defer their removal until that application can be processed.
St. James’ Anglican Church (303 East Cordova St.), where the event will be held, is one of the locations where Porto has been preparing and distributing meals in the Downtown Eastside since the beginning of the pandemic.
The weekend event, set for 11 a.m. to noon, will include an art display exhibiting hundreds of Christmas cards that have been prepared to send to the minister of immigration asking him to intercede on the family’s behalf.
A Sanctuary Health letter-writing campaign is continuing, with 1,637 letters sent as of this post.
Follow Julie MacLellan on Twitter @juliemaclellan.
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