Expectant mom loses healthcare provision due to immigration backlog

Published:  13 May at 6 PM
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A Peruvian mum-to-be married to a fifth-generation Canadian is being forced to choose between paying CA$20,000 hospital bills or having her baby at home.

Kevin Ganshorn and his wife Susanna met and married four years ago in Peru, and moved to Vancouver after two years. Susanna has applied for permanent residency, but her paperwork is stuck in a massive backlog, meaning that she has no health coverage as the provincial authority has refused to cover her for the birth without the correct paperwork stating her application is being processed.

The website of Citizenship and Immigration Canada shows her application was received in August last year, and states that it is ‘in process’. However, as the application goes through two stages, sponsorship by her husband and residency itself, health laws in British Columbia require proof that the final clearance is under way.

Kevin believes the application is istuck n a pile on someone’s desk, and immigration officials are being far less than helpful as regards clearance for Susanna’s health coverage. The couple have been told that they must wait another eight months at least for her permanent residency to be approved, and are left with the only option, a home birth attended by a midwife as they cannot afford hospital charges.

According to a local midwife, Susanna’s case is one of many, all delayed by the backlog of applications with those involved receiving little or no help from the immigration authorities. Local media have taken up the couple’s predicament and although Canada’s immigration minister is refusing to comment on the issue, the publicity is expected to lead to an exception being made in Susanna’s case, allowing her to give birth in hospital.
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Comments » There is 1 comment

Claudia wrote 9 years ago:

Reading articles like this makes me feel so lucky. I live in Alberta. I was able to get health coverage for being married to a Canadian even when my permanent residency was still being processed and I was visiting on a tourist visa. It only took 6 months to be approved for my PR. Maybe I was very very lucky regardless of the consular strike that took place at the same time.

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