The WTF Thread

A 29-year-old South Sudanese man accused of posing as a high school student in Canada after allegedly entering the country illegally claims he did not know his real age.

Jonathan Elia Nicola, who played basketball on his high school team, told officials during a recent detention hearing that he was not lying about being a teenager to attend the high school. He said he was never given a clear answer from his mother about his actual age, according to the Toronto Star.

“I always keep asking what is the specific (year) that I was born, and she has told me that she could not remember,” he testified, according to the newspaper. “Over (in South Sudan) … they do not ask your age. They do not ask you nothing.”

The Canada Border Services Agency was tipped off to Nicola’s status by American authorities late last year when he applied for a U.S. visitor’s visa to play basketball with the school in the U.S., according to the Toronto Sun. He had tried at least four times to get into the U.S. but his applications were rejected, the newspaper said.

Nicola has been held by Canadian immigration since April 15 and was ordered to remain in custody, according to the Star. “I am not a liar person. I am religious. I pray to God,” he added.

A non-Spanish-speaking teacher is suing her employer for rejecting her from a job that required her to teach the language.

Tracy Rosner, a third-grade teacher at Coral Reef Elementary in Palmetto Bay, Florida, applied to teach an extended foreign language track, which required teaching one hour of a foreign language daily, the Miami New Times reported.

But the district required that those taught Spanish in the extended foreign language track speak Spanish as well, and Rosner didn’t. She was turned down for the job.

In response, Rosner filed a federal lawsuit last week in the Southern District of Florida, alleging that the district’s policy of only hiring Spanish speakers was discriminatory against non-Spanish speakers in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, the New Times reported.

The lawsuit also alleged that Rosner, aside from her lack of facility with the Spanish language, was “fully qualified” for the job and could have fulfilled its requirements so long as the school assigned a Spanish-speaking instructor to the foreign language portion of the teaching position.

According to the lawsuit, after Rosner’s rejection, the school asked her to take on more teaching responsibilities to get back at her for applying. The lawsuit said Rosner sought a reversal from the school’s superintendent and other administrators with no results.

Neither the school board nor Rosner responded to the New Times’ requests for comment.