Article content continued

During his time in New Brunswick, Joseph became an active member of a local church, where he sings and plays the guitar during services. His wife, Billi, joined him in Canada in 2013 to take a job at the same company.

They met in Taiwan, where they were each working to support their children in the Philippines. Previous to that, Joseph says he earned $4 a day, driving a motorcycle taxi in the Philippines. It wasn’t enough to put his four children through good schools.

In November, the two had another child in Canada.

Photo by Alia Dharssi / Postmedia

Billi has to continue earning money in Canada to support their children, but they are not sure how they will care for their baby girl if Joseph has to go home. Billi works long hours six days per week.

Joseph has applied to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds, but a decision could take months.

“I always doubt what will happen to my family if I go back home,” he said with a tear in his eye. He has already received a notice from the border services agency telling him to leave the country.

It is not just a loss for Joseph, but a loss to the local community if he leaves, says Rev. Brock Symonds, a pastor at a Baptist church in Shediac.

His shrinking church was transformed by an influx of Filipino migrants.

When he started working there at 35, he was one of the youngest people in the church by two decades.

Now his congregation is filled with Filipino workers in their 20s and 30s. They’ve livened up services, infusing them with devotional rock music that has replaced 200-year-old songs on the piano, while a new enlarged building wouldn’t have been constructed without them, said Symonds.