'Our wings have been clipped': Quebec's 'guardian angels' in health care face deportation

Romain Schué · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 15, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Sitting successful his humble Quebec City apartment, 29-year-old Idriss Moussa Souni lets retired a sigh. 

Beside him are a fewer boxes, a well-worn sofa, hastily hung curtains and a microwave connected the floor.

The plain decor evokes the uncertainty and anxiousness astir his deportation that is inexorably approaching.

Souni is 1 of thousands of Quebec asylum seekers who cared for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic successful health-care establishments who have been refused imperishable residency nether a national pathway acceptable up to convey them. Others person been waiting for years.

The Chadian information defender says helium goes to enactment each day at the Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec with a knot successful his stomach. He's held this presumption for astir 7 years.

"I consciousness wholly abandoned. As if everything we've fixed isn't enough," said Souni. "I can't program ahead, I unrecorded time to time without knowing what the extremity of the passageway volition be." 

Souni arrived successful Canada successful 2018, seeking asylum, and says helium played a cardinal relation astatine the infirmary helium works astatine during immoderate of the toughest moments of the pandemic. 

"I was carrying the bodies [of the deceased]. We were taking them retired of the rooms and bringing them to the acold country for the coroner," helium said, inactive shaken by the aggregate tasks he performed to marque the installation safer. 

From disinfecting rooms and hallways to assisting nurses and orderlies, his duties went acold beyond the relation of a information guard. 

"I gave everything I could. Some chose to enactment home, to instrumentality authorities assistance, but we were there. We took each those risks," said Souni.

"We allowed those who came to prevention lives to bash it safely. No 1 agrees to travel and work successful an situation that isn't safe. We had to marque doctors privation to come." 

'Thrown distant similar garbage'

The national government, successful collaboration with Quebec, put successful spot a impermanent programme betwixt December 14, 2020 and August 31, 2021 to supply a pathway to imperishable residency for asylum seekers whose requests for presumption were pending oregon failed and who worked successful the health-care system during the pandemic.

According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), retired of the 13,230 regularization requests filed, 9,205 person been approved, including 3,601 successful Quebec.

But 3,515 claimants were rejected by Ottawa and 291 files by Quebec. The national authorities processes idiosyncratic applications portion the provincial authorities processes files that whitethorn see respective people.

At the clip of the program, Souni was 1 of galore "guardian angels" — the nickname fixed to indispensable workers successful health-care establishments during the archetypal question of COVID-19.

But the imagination of regularization vanished, owed to the criteria imposed by the governments. 

To beryllium eligible for imperishable residency, asylum seekers must:

• Have provided nonstop diligent care.
• Have worked astatine slightest 120 hours successful a health-care constitution betwixt March 13, 2020 and August 14, 2020.
• Have astatine slightest six months of nonrecreational acquisition successful a health-care institution.
• Have applied by the deadline. 

The archetypal criterion instantly excluded galore workers similar Souni, who were incapable to beryllium that their existent missions went good beyond their archetypal mandate.

"Our wings person been clipped, it's a full disappointment. Everything we've fixed has been forgotten," helium said. 

And Souni is not the lone 1 successful this situation.

Didier, an Ivorian information defender who has worked successful respective seniors' residences and astatine the Pierre-Boucher Hospital successful Longueuil, Que., says helium doesn't person a occupation nor status. 

Radio-Canada agreed to conceal his individuality arsenic helium is present an undocumented migrant and is connected Canadian ungraded illegally.

"I helped the nurses, I helped surface the Canadians. But astatine the past minute, I was thrown retired similar an outsider," said Didier.

"We were told we did a singular job, we were nicknamed 'guardian angels,' but aft the extremity of the pandemic, we were thrown distant similar garbage bags." 

Maryse Poisson, the manager of societal initiatives astatine the Welcome Collective, says she's witnessed "unfair situations." 

"Some radical are devastated and connected the brink of collapse," she said. "These are radical who play a precise important relation successful our health-care system." 

One of the radical Poisson is helping is simply a Nigerian orderly who also worked during the pandemic. She present faces deportation.

Even though the woman's occupation fell squarely wrong the scope of the occupations accepted by the program, she didn't accumulate capable hours during the archetypal wave.

And for a precise elemental reason.

"She gave commencement and truthful stopped moving during that period. Yet, passim the remainder of the pandemic, she was there," said Poisson. 

A 'very slow' regularization process

Over four years aft the motorboat of the impermanent policy, Radio-Canada has learned that 380 people, including 225 successful Quebec, are inactive waiting to get their imperishable residency done the program. 

IRCC says "the complexity of the exertion arsenic good arsenic the capableness and resources disposable [of the ministry and its processing centres]" are immoderate of the assorted factors explaining these delays.

Marjorie Villefranche, manager of the Maison d'Haïti, 1 of the organizations mandated to assistance asylum seekers with these procedures, describes the "very slow" process arsenic an "obstacle course." 

"Even erstwhile they archer you, 'Yes, it's OK, your presumption volition beryllium regularized,' you inactive person to hold for a precise agelong time," she said.

Souni, for his part, reflects connected the past fewer years, with small anticipation for the future.

"During the pandemic, everyone was acrophobic of catching COVID. It was sidesplitting people. We had to get to work, we needed radical consenting to dice for Canada," helium said.

"There were thanks, but that doesn't instrumentality distant the feeling of being deported, of abandoning everything we've accomplished here. We consciousness forgotten."