A Calgary couple is pleading with the Canadian government to help get them and their newly adopted child back home. Derek and Emilie Muth say they have been dealing with red tape, life-threatening medical conditions and being stranded in isolation in Barbados.
Derek and Emilie left Calgary for Nigeria last October on the trip of a lifetime to adopt their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Zoe. The couple says Zoe’s adoption was completed in Nigeria on Oct. 28, 2019, but her citizenship still isn’t.
Because of COVID-19, Canadian immigration staff were repatriated from the only government office in West Africa that can finish their paperwork.
“I feel emotional talking about it. We really want to be home with our family and navigating parenthood is really hard, especially with a child who has special requirements,” said Emilie through tears from their apartment in Barbados.
To make matters worse, Zoe came down with a life-threatening complication from her genetic disorder and required a blood transfusion. Luckily, Derek was a blood type match but both of them contracted malaria as a result of the transfusion.
A doctor in Nigeria recommended they go to a country with better medical care so they travelled to Barbados because it’s one of the few countries that allows Canadian and Nigerian visitors to stay for months without visas.
The Muths arrived in Barbados in December. Zoe’s condition did improve but then a global pandemic forced them into lockdown.
They’ve been stuck in Barbados ever since because their requests for a visitor visa have been denied.
“Zoe has lung development issues and you throw COVID(-19) into the mix and we are throwing up our hands saying, ‘Help us. This is very high risk. Canada, we need help. We are sheltering in place. We don’t know what to do,'” Derek said.
Alicia Backman-Beharry, a Calgary immigration lawyer who is representing the family pro bono, said it appears the family has done everything correctly in terms of the adoption paperwork and in their attempts to leave Barbados.
“Immigration refused the visitor visa because the generic reason was that they couldn’t show temporary intent to come to Canada,” Backman-Beharry said.
“The visitor’s visa application is a temporary application to come to Canada, and everybody has to show that they’re going to leave Canada, and one thing that Derek and Emilie had said in that application was that they fully intend to comply with immigration laws and if it’s required that they go back to Nigeria to do anything, to finalize anything, even if an in-person interview is required, they can do that. But in the meantime, they just really hope that they would be able to bring their daughter back.”
Backman-Beharry said that diplomatic staff were pulled out of various countries and it seems like that’s exactly what happened in Ghana.
“There is a kind of skeleton crew of maybe one or two employees that are left in the office and it seems like nobody has even opened the stage two application, which was fully submitted and fully completed 10 months ago. So it’s been sitting there for the last 10 months, and it doesn’t seem like it’s been opened,” Backman-Beharry said.
“It seems very clear that everything has been properly followed and it’s just a matter of this family being stuck because the foreign office was shut down due to the pandemic.”
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not reply to a request for comment as of time of publication. A statement to the family in September 2020 from IRCC stated that the application is in queue for review with visa officials at the Canadian visa office in Accra, Ghana.
“Due to the impacts of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, IRCC is unable to provide processing times for applications at this time,” states the ministerial correspondence.
“We are jumping country to country and hotel to apartments. It’s a logistics nightmare. It’s very stressful and it’s overwhelming. It’s hard to focus on your family when you have so much going on around you,” Derek said.
A spokesperson for Alberta Children’s Services told Global News that staff have been working with the family and have advocated on their behalf to the Canadian Immigration department.
“It is now up to the federal government to work with the family to get the necessary documentation to return to Canada,” Nancy Bishay said in a statement.
Emilie, who is a registered nurse, remains optimistic the family will be together at some point, back in Alberta.
“It’s taking a really long time to build that bond and that attachment. We are still working on it. But every day we see Zoe coming out of her shell and we see her personality blooming,” she said.
“I think the moment that we walk into the Alberta Children’s Hospital I’m just going to weep because we are just carrying this burden on our shoulders trying to navigate health care.
“I feel overwhelmed, definitely, but I’m trying to remain positive and remember that we are so blessed and we try to focus on the good things.”
A co-worker of Emilie’s has now started a fundraiser for the family.
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