Kept apart by coronavirus and a border
Ottawa petitioned to let foreign national spouses, Canadians to reunite
Canadians separated from their foreign spouses due to border closings have launched a petition urging Ottawa to reunite them during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We hope more people will learn about what’s going on and how tough it is for people to be separated from their husbands, wives and partners,” said Emma Holmes of Ottawa, who started the campaign on Saturday.
“I’m sure a lot of Canadians are not in favour of separating couples, children and families if they know about this. This is not what Canada is about as a country.”
In March, Ottawa closed the border to non-Canadians, but made exceptions for immediate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents. The ban was to curtail the spread of COVID-19.
However, since April, Canada Border Services Agency has begun refusing foreign spouses and children of Canadians from entering the country at land border crossings and airports on the grounds that their travels are “non-essential and discretionary.”
Holmes, a graduate student at McMaster University, said she was concerned about the effects of the border measures because her Austrian partner, Larissa Kroell, is neither a Canadian citizen nor a permanent resident.
The couple have been seeing each other for two years and are in a long-distance relationship, with Holmes visiting whenever she had the chance. They’ve been separated since Holmes returned from a visit during the winter break.
She was supposed to return again in April and Kroell was planning to apply for a student permit in the fall. But those plans are on hold and the couple is concerned the border restrictions mean they’ll be apart for much longer.
“I was surprised when I started hearing that even couples who are legally married and have kids are being separated,” said the 23-year-old, who met
Kroell, also 23, in Canada. “Reuniting with family members is essential.”
Her petition demands that the federal government declare reuniting Canadian families “essential travel” and recognize a letter or sworn statement from a family member as proof of relationship, given the difficulty in producing formal documentations in a pandemic.
So far, the petition has collected 900 signatures from supporters, including Toronto’s Daniel Pascale, who has been separated from his commonlaw partner, Krista Partipelo, of New York, for almost two months.
Pascale, 27, who was on a work permit in the U.S., said Partipelo has made two failed attempts to join him in Canada — once on March 20, at Lacolle, Que., just 90 minutes before the land border was closed, and then a month later at Rainbow Bridge, Ont., by herself.
“We packed everything into our car and made it to the border before midnight on March 20, but the border agency had prematurely started enforcing the restrictions,” recalled Pascale, who ended up taking a cab to Montreal that night so Partipelo, 30, could have the car to return to the U.S. “It was one of the most traumatizing nights of our lives.”
After reaching out to immigration and border officials, the couple prepared all the documentation they needed, such as shared leases and bills, as well as support letters from their families and his Canadian MP, Julie Dzerowicz. They also had a quarantine plan in place for her.
On April 20, Partipelo drove to the southern Ontario border, but was again denied entry.
Pascale and his family were actually on the Canadian side of the border, waiting to welcome her.
“We had done everything we were told and got a portfolio of evidence to prove our relationship. With all that hope built up, we found out the intention of the policy is really to deny any non-resident from coming,” said Pascale, who has been with Partipelo for two years.
“I was 100 feet away from the Canadian border office, but I couldn’t even see Kris or be near her. That was the most painful.”