Since first publishing on April 16, 1891 the Chilliwack Progress has been the newspaper of record in Chilliwack.
One hundred and 28 years later the Progress remains the longest continuously published newspaper in British Columbia. With the addition of a thriving digital operation anchored by theprogress.com, the Progress delivers more news to more people than ever before.
‘From the Progress Archives’ is a journey into the past, to see what was making news decades ago.
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Headline: Students help single mom fight to stay in Canada
Date: February 12, 1999
Reporter: Mark Falkenberg
Christina Lorentz thought it was probably more bad news.
It hadn’t been long since the 17-year-old Chilliwack secondary school student learned that she faced being kicked out of the country after learning – to her surprise – she wasn’t a Canadian citizen. Now her teacher Irene Herczeg was summoning her.
“When she called me into the office I thought I was was going to get in trouble,” Christina says.
But it was some good news for a change.
Ms. Herczeg told Christina that her friends in the school’s parenting class were banding together to raise the money she needed to become a landed immigrant, beating the threat of deportation that hung over her and her baby son Norman.
And even now, several months later, she still has to fight tears thinking of her friends’ vow to help.
“It was a big surprise,” she says. “It was very overwhelming.”
Christina, who was born in Washington State and came to B.C. with her mom when she was 10, first discovered she was in legal no-man’s land last fall when she applied for a daycare subsidy from the Ministry of Social Services. When the people in charge tried to process it, they couldn’t find any record of her, finally figuring out she wasn’t a Canadian citizen or landed immigrant, and therefore barred from receiving any aid.
“The ones who got right behind it right away were the other teen moms,” says CSS teacher Joe Ogmundson, who’s helping to organize the effort to keep Christina in the country. “They’re the real heroes in this.”
One of the young women, Carrie Mastin, says it didn’t take long for the group to decide to take action.
“We’re all single moms here and we know how hard it is to begin with,” she says. “Now this is another thing she has to deal with.
“This is her home. This is her family. We’re going to do whatever we can for her.”
The school first contacted the B.C. Ombudsman’s office to see if there was some kind of exemption for Christina under the circumstances.
“We thought we were getting somewhere with the Ombudsman,” says Mr. Ogmundson, but by then Christina’s case had already been red-flagged by immigration officials, who made it clear the teen would have to go through the whole process and cough up $1,500 – or leave the country.
“Once they determined that she’s not here with any kind of status at all … she was told essentially she’s got 18 months or she goes back there,” says Mr. Ogmundson.
And while he doesn’t think “anybody at Immigration Canada is in any hurry to see her go,” Christina would almost certainly be forced to leave without the financial help her friends are seeking for her.
Ms. Herczeg says the whole process will take about four months. In the meantime, they’ll collect the rest of the $500 they need to start the application (they’ve raised $300 so far) and then go after the remaining $1,000 with raffles and pledges.
TLC Daycare is meanwhile covering the $6,000 cost of sponsoring care of baby Norman from September last year until June, with the ope of recovering some of the money through donations.