SOURCE – CBC NEWS:
Machel Rayner, the Jamaican-born man who feared having to leave his adopted country of Canada, has had his work permit reinstated by the Newfoundland and Labrador government.
Rayner, 31, received tremendous support after a CBC News story aired Thursday morning on his plight to stay in the province.
By late Thursday afternoon, Rayner received word that his work permit had been reopened, allowing him to stay and work in the province until an appeals hearing in January.
His appeal, however, could still be denied, but the move by provincial officials allows him to continue to make money for him and his family.
“People may think social media is full of anger all the time, but in this case, it was really just a demonstration of support for Machel,” said Liberal MP Nick Whalen, whose office helped Rayner with his permanent residency application in the spring.
The back story
After eight years living in the most easterly Canadian province, Rayner received confirmation of his permanent residency in Newfoundland and Labrador in September.
However, there was one more thing he had to do.
Rayner needed to find a good-paying job, one that could support him, his two younger siblings and his mother back in his home country of Jamaica.
But that one move — temporarily relocating to Halifax for work — put him at odds with the rules of the Newfoundland and Labrador government immigration program, which insisted that he stay put inside the province. The expulsion threw his life, and the lives of his family, into flux.
“I was distraught. I was weak in the knees,” Rayner, 31, said in an interview Wednesday.
“I cried at the airport. I … feel as if I let everyone down.”
Love of Newfoundland
Nearly a decade ago, while working at a Sandals resort in Jamaica, Rayner was approached by a couple from Newfoundland who sold their province as a place where the charismatic Rayner could live and thrive.
Intrigued, he applied to do his undergrad at Memorial University and was accepted.
The province upheld all his expectations, he said.
The full story is available on the CBC website: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland
