Whitehorse student wins temporary reprieve from deportation

A Whitehorse high school student who faces deportation back to Mexico will be allowed to finish her school year and graduate, thanks in part to a campaign organized by her classmates.

Jacqueline Garcia Morales, 22, who has been in Canada for the past two years and is studying at F.H. Collins Secondary School, sought the extension while she applies to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

"I sent a letter requesting for more time to allow me to finish the school [year] and for my son to finish ... school, too," Garcia Morales, a mother of two, told CBC News on Friday.

Without the extension, Garcia Morales said, she would have had to leave Canada on Thursday. Hermother, her sister and her sister'syoung child, who are also in the Yukon, have yet to hear back on whether their deportation orders have been extended.

"On one hand, I feel happy because I got more time, but on the other hand ... I don't want to go," she said.

Over the past few weeks, more than 400 people signed a petition asking federal authorities to let Garcia Morales stay in Canada for the rest of the academic year.

Michael Dougherty, who co-ordinated petition efforts at the Whitehorse high school, said it was "an important lesson in civics for them ... that taking a stand, making your voice heard, can yield positive results."

Garcia Morales said that if she does notget a response to her application on humanitarian grounds by July 1, she will be deported back to Mexico.

"If I go back to Mexico, I have nobody," Garcia Morales said in an earlier interview.

"We're just single mothers, and we are hard workers, and I don't think we are doing any bad thing against Canada or something. I think they should give us an opportunity to stay."