Jamie Sarkonak: The sex criminal in Canada illegally who got a work permit

Photo by Gerry Kahrmann / PNG

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In June, a Colombian man was sentenced in Surrey, B.C., for sexual interference against a 12-year-old. The victim was the daughter of the man’s landlady, who rented out rooms in her house. The man, aged 31 at the time, was shovelling snow with the girl on a January 2024 afternoon; when the pair entered a shed on the property to retrieve some salt, he closed the door behind them and kissed her on the lips. She screamed and fled back to the house and to the safety of another adult.

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For all this, the man was sentenced to one year of house arrest followed by one year of curfew.

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It was a crime that should have been impossible to commit because the man wasn’t supposed to be in Canada in the first place. He was an illegal migrant who had previously been deported in the summer of 2022 after failing to substantiate an asylum claim. He’d snuck back in a few months later, and was an illegal resident when he preyed upon his landlady’s child.

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The man admitted what he did during his psychological assessment, saying that “in our culture, it is normal when you greet someone you can kiss lightly on the cheek. I accidentally brushed my mouth against her cheek and her mouth.” (When he testified at trial, he changed his story, claiming that there was no kiss at all.)

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The act of sexual interference should have made the man’s life more difficult, but instead, it did the opposite. In the weeks that followed the incident, he made a second asylum claim. This restored to him the rights of an asylum seeker, including access to an expansive, mostly subsidized health care plan paid for by the Canadian taxpayer.

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As a previously deported person now on the radar of the law, the man became the subject of a removal order — but it couldn’t be acted upon. One reason for this was that he had active criminal matters before the courts, and had to remain in Canada until they were finished. Additionally, on the immigration front, his second asylum claim was being processed. He was also working to take the teeth out of the removal order against him with a pre-removal risk assessment that, if it went in his favour, would make deportation impossible even if his asylum claim was rejected. In June, he was still awaiting answers from immigration authorities on his files.

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His personal circumstances are now more favourable to remaining in Canada: according to the B.C. Provincial Court, he married a protected person with permanent residency, with whom he shared a two-year-old child. The three were living together in the landlady’s home when the man committed his act of sexual interference. The wife sponsored his refugee application, criminal infidelity aside, and he’ll be able to use the wife and child to make a plea to stay in the country on humanitarian and compassionate grounds if his current asylum application fails.