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The woman, who has also worked in Dubai and on a cruise ship in the food-services industry, said she enjoyed working at McDonald’s. She came to Canada because she had friends who also worked here.

“I felt like everybody who was in Canada was in a better place. If you want to have a stable job, you can bring your family, people are talking about it and, yeah, every dream that you have, you can complete here in Canada. You can bring your family and give them a better future,” she said.

Ms. Venancio said she had been enlisted in leadership and management training and was working her way up the food chain before she was injured.

Afterward, however, there was no way she could return to work. Those who can’t work can’t apply for a permit to stay in the country.

The tide has turned on the Temporary Foreign Worker program; since several companies and restaurants were found to have employed TFWs at the expense of Canadian workers, the federal government has announced strict new rules that prohibit them from working in the fast food service sector.

In the Philippines, they don’t have medical care anywhere near the same caliber they have here in Canada

For MLA Thomas Lukaszuk, who has taken on the role of a de facto advocate for immigrants in the province, the situation is a little different in Alberta; here, workers are still scarce and the TFW program has offered many immigrants opportunities they would have never had at home. He supports the program, but thinks Ms. Venancio’s predicament is indicative of a major oversight.

“It speaks to the dysfunctionality of the Temporary Worker Program,” he said. “It’s a by-product of multiple Band-Aids that have been put together to make this program work.”

Ms. Venancio may not know for years whether she will be allowed to stay in Canada on compassionate grounds. If CBSA chooses to enforce Immigration Canada’s order, she could be deported much sooner than that.

“It puts a black eye on the immigration system,” he said.

“The fact is, we have thousands of people who live here without status and many temporary foreign workers, they don’t depart.”

National Post

jgerson@nationalpost.com