Clerical Error #1
I made a slight error on my post from 2/28 where I recapped my mileage for February. I noticed after I posted it that my entry for 2/28 consisted of 8.57 miles on the elliptical and no miles on the treadmill. I forgot to input the measly .28 miles I did on that while waiting for an elliptical to open up. So my actual total for the month of February is 221.54 miles.
Clerical Error #2
I'm not the only person in my family to experience a clerical error. Mine was minor. My younger brother's, however, was not.
A U.S. citizen who has been living in New Brunswick since 2004 says he was deported Wednesday after travelling to the border to sort out a clerical error.
Jeff Curley, who is married to a Canadian with whom he has a 12-week-old baby and two teenaged step sons, said the clerical error was made when he renewed his annual work visa in January.
A border official in St. Stephen, N.B., mistakenly entered Jan. 20 as both the issue date and expiry date for the permit.
Curley said it was only after he returned to Saint John, where he lives and works, that his employer noticed the error.
Curley contacted the Canada Border Services Agency. His understanding from agency officials was that he just had to ask for a reprint of the visa. But when he arrived at the St. Stephen office on Wednesday, border officials kept him waiting three hours.
Barred for a year
Curley said he was then informed a separate form — his application for residency, which he had submitted in 2005 — had been refused and he had to leave Canada. He was escorted across the border into the U.S. with only the clothes on his back and the change in his pocket, he said.
"I begged the officer to talk to my wife, who is my sponsor, who has just as much right as I do over this, and he wouldn't speak to her," Curley told CBC News on Thursday. "The only thing he had on his mind was walking me across."
He said he was told he could not return to Canada for at least a year and he would be arrested if he tried.
Curley is now staying in a hotel across the border in Calais, Maine, with his wife and baby. Their two teenage sons are in Saint John with their grandmother.
Trying politicians for help
The family has been told to deal with immigration officials in New York State, where Curley is from originally. He is trying to get a letter from Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and has also contacted Saint John MP Rodney Weston and Halifax immigration lawyer Lee Cohen.
Curley hopes to at least get a six-month visitor's visa to Canada so he can stay in his adopted home until the matter is resolved. He said he does not have a criminal record and does not know why he was deported. His only guess is that he was supposed to get a second physical done for the residency application he submitted in 2005 and never did.
But he said this was discussed when he was at the border on Jan. 20. He said he told officials he would see to it within six weeks and they told him it would not be a problem.
Curley said he never got anything in the mail warning him to get the second physical done.
He said he didn't realize the urgency involved since his application has been in the works for several years now.
Canada Border Services Agency officials say they can't comment on specific cases, but they're looking into the matter.
1 comment:
Why do I get the feeling Canada is as screwed up as America? I thought they were supposed to be better than us!
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