A CLOSER LOOK 3
A boxer and a boy share stories
NEWS 8
A rough ride for scooters
SPORTS 28
5
Local players pick up the Czech
THINGS TO DO THIS WEEKEND FRIDAY JULY 8, 2016
LOCAL NEWS – LOCAL MATTERS
SEE PAGE 23
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SFU INSTRUCTOR CAN’T STAY IN CANADA
‘It’s home, and I don’t want to leave’
Jonathan Newman has lived in Burnaby since he was three – but now he’ll have to leave with his parents By Cornelia Naylor
cnaylor@burnabynow.com
Cariboo Hill Secondary Grade 9 student Jonathan Newman is leaving on a jet plane and he doesn’t know if he’ll be back again. The 14-year-old has lived in Canada since age three, making friends in his neighbourhood near the Burnaby Mountain Golf Course and at Scouts, Sperling Elementary and Cariboo Hill Secondary. But he, his mom and his dad, David Newman, an SFU communications instructor, can’t stay because of problems with their immigration status. “It’s home, and I don’t want to leave home,” Jonathan told the NOW. “I’d be fine if I was gone for just a year, but anything more than that, I wouldn’t really like that. I’d be away from all my friends who I’ve known for 11 years now.” Jonathan’s dad, who holds a New Zealand passport like his son, is caught in a catch-22 when it comes to getting permanent residency in Canada under the current express-entry points system. Newman senior gets no points for having a continuing position at SFU – even though he has been working at the university continuously for eight-and-ahalf years – but he said he is blocked from consideration for permanent positions because of his immigration status. With the expiry of his post-graduation work permit (Newman finished his
FUTURE UNKNOWN Cariboo Hill student Jonathan Newman, right, considers himself Canadian, but he and his family may be forced to leave Canada because his father, SFU instructor David Newman, left, can’t secure permanent resident status, despite having worked at SFU continuously for the last eight-and-a-half years. PHOTO CORNELIA NAYLOR
PhD at SFU in 2013), he can no longer work in Canada and Jonathan can no longer attend school. The family is appealing to Minister of Immigration John McCallum through Burnaby North-Seymour MP Terry Beech’s office, hoping the minister will use his discretionary powers to grant the family permanent
residency or an invitation to apply on humanitarian and compassionate grounds – so Jonathan can go to Cariboo Hill and the family doesn’t have to pull up its roots in Burnaby. Newman has a lot of support in SFU’s school of communication, according to professor Jody Baker, who has personally written
the immigration minister on his behalf. “He’s had a huge impact on a lot of students here,” Baker said. “He teaches one of the introductory firstyear courses, so he’s got a lot of students, and then he teachers a lot of upper-year courses.They’re very small and very intense.” Baker said he has invited
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his friends and colleagues in the school of communication to write letters of support. The communication student union is also behind him. “Many of us have taken courses with Dr. Newman and have learned valuable things from him,” president Tiana Marconato told the
NOW in an email. “As a student union, we’ll be writing a letter to the minister of immigration urging him to exercise his discretionary powers to grant Dr. Newman and his family permanent resident status so he can continue to teach his courses at SFU.We will also Continued on page 4
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