'Hanging on for her life': Sask. family desperate to bring home sick niece from Philippines

For half a decade, a Saskatoon family has been trying to bring their orphaned niece to Canada, they say now it’s a matter of life or death.

Ross and Joyce Thompson have been trying to bring home their niece, Arissa Gomez, who currently lives in the Philippines.

They say the 16-year-old weighs under 60 pounds, is severely malnourished, has polyps, and non-cancerous tumours in her throat and nose.

“Looking at her, it’s just heartbreaking, but yet she hangs on,” Joyce Thompson told CTV News.

Joyce says she was a straight-A student until this year, when her health took a turn for the worse.

“Her condition right now, she’s hanging on for her life,” she said.

Joyce Thompson says Arissa Gomez was a ‘straight A’ student until this year when her health took a turn for the worse. (Photo submitted

She says Gomez became an orphan at age four when her mother was stabbed to death in front of her.

Since then, the Thompsons say they’ve been financially supporting her, making annual trips to the Philippines and relying on family and friends to watch over her.

“Joyce is always the one that has to find lodging for her. She’ll get her into a place and then that won't turn out. She’ll have to find another place to put her in, and that's a lot of her malnutrition problems, is even in these places she's not getting the care that she should,” Ross Thompson said.

In 2019, the Thompsons decided to adopt her, starting with social services in Saskatchewan to do several evaluations, and then the case was passed on to intercountry adoption.

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In 2022, Ross says they heard social services in the Philippines lost the file and by the time it was found again everything expired.

“They said everything in here is expired…we need you to get a new home evaluation, all new medicals, all new police checks, all your references have to be redone. So we had to more or less start from scratch,” Ross said.

In the summer of 2023, the adoption was approved by both social services in the Philippines and in Saskatchewan. Next, the Thompsons would have to go through the immigration process.

In 2019, the Thompson family decided to adopt Arissa Gomez. (Photo submitted)

They say the most recent setback is getting their niece’s medical assessment to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). While they were told it was sent over, their application status for permanent residency indicates it was not received.

“IRCC identified an administrative issue that had prevented Arissa Gomez’s medical examination from being linked to her application for permanent residence,” IRCC told CTV News in a statement.

“The issue has now been corrected. IRCC will contact Arissa Gomez about the next steps in due course.”

The Thompsons hope to bring Gomez home as soon as possible so she can get Canadian medical care and finally have a family.

“We just need somebody to step up. We need a human. There's got to be somebody out there that that can do something,” Ross Thompson said.

“Something has to be done because it is five and a half years, it's not fair to the kids that are the ones who suffer,” Joyce Thompson said.