Federal ‘clerical error’ puts N.S. legal status of mom, daughter at risk

Diana Calderón and her daughter have been given until Nov. 4 to go through the costly process of reapplying for a work permit, or be forced to leave the country.

Since the school year began, Diana Calderón has spent most weekend afternoons driving her 14-year-old daughter to the Halifax junior high school she should be attending, timing their visits with recess so the teenager can spend a few minutes with her classmates.

“I’m driving her so she can see her friends and talk to them during that time… we do this almost every day,” Calderón said.

“Sometimes we don’t go… when she says: ‘I don’t want to go today, I feel too sad,’” she said, adding that her daughter finds it painful to not be allowed in the classroom with her friends when recess ends.

The single mother said she’s been desperate to give her daughter moments of normalcy and time with her peers since their lives were ended in August.

Calderón, who is originally from Colombia and immigrated to Canada from Peru in 2022, said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada informed her on Aug. 6 that it had rejected her work permit, because her employer of about two years, Nova Scotia Health, did not pay a $230 compliance fee — a payment the provincial health authority says it paid.

“I thought I was going to faint. And then I saw there’s another letter for my daughter,” Calderón said in an interview Monday, holding back tears.

That letter, also sent from the federal department and directed to 14-year-old Sofia, said she was no longer permitted to study in the country because of her mother’s rejected work permit. Calderón and her daughter were given 90 days from the rejection, until Nov. 4, to go through the costly process of reapplying for a work permit, or be forced to leave the country.

Jennifer Lewandowski, a spokesperson for Health Nova Scotia, said the health authority looked into the refused work permit in August and “it became clear that this was the result of a clerical error that needs to be fixed quickly.” Lewandowski said the health authority paid the fee in full on Dec. 12, 2024.