Did Canada use facial-recognition software to strip two refugees of their status? A court wants better answers

2022/09/21 Leave a comment

Judge Go’s activist background likely influenced this decision questioning the lack of due process and transparency over decision-making:

Canadian authorities can’t just brush off allegations that they are using facial-recognition software to discredit asylum-seekers, a court has ruled.

The decision by the Federal Court comes in a case that has cast a spotlight on the possible use of the technology by the Canada Border Services Agency — a practice the agency denies.

At the centre of the case are Asha Ali Barre and Alia Musa Hosh.

The pair claimed to be Sunni Sufi Muslims, who fled sectarian and gender-based violence from Al-Shabaab and other militant Islamist groups in Somalia.

They were accepted by Canada as refugees in May 2017 and July 2018, respectively.

In 2020, border officials moved to strip their refugee status before the Refugee Protection Division tribunal, alleging in part through photo comparisons that they were in fact Kenyans, a claim the women denied. Barre and Hosh lost their refugee status, and have appealed in court.

At issue was the alleged use of facial recognition technology, but also the privilege that authorities enjoy in withholding the source of their photo comparisons — and their investigative methods — under the Privacy Act.

“The RPD gave a cursory nod to the Respondent’s Privacy Act argument and failed to engage in the necessary consideration of balancing the alleged protection of privacy rights with the Applicant’s procedural fairness right to disclosure,” Judge Avvy Go wrote in a recent ruling in favour of the women’s joint appeal.

“The RPD’s swift acceptance of the Minister’s exemption request, in the absence of a cogent explanation for why the information is protected from disclosure, appears to be a departure from its general practice.”

Last year, Canadian Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien found that the RCMP committed a “serious violation” of Canadians’ privacy by conducting searches of Clearview AI’s facial recognition database, which contains billions of photos of people scraped from the internet, including from social media sites.

Facial recognition technology has been used in Canadian immigration settings to verify the identities of incoming travellers through automated kiosks at airports, but border officials have maintained they don’t use it in immigration enforcement.

Lawyer Quinn Campbell Keenan, who represented Barre and Hosh, was pleased with Go’s decision.

“It sent a clear message to the minister and the Canada Border Services Agency against the use of photo comparison or matching software to single out individuals for possible deportation on the basis of this very dubious photo matching technology,” she told the Star.

Other lawyers also hailed the decision after seeing a surge of former and current Somali refugees having their identities challenged by the border agency through photo matching with Kenyan travellers who had previously entered Canada legally. Many of those cases are now being contested in court.

“There has to be a balanced approach where, at the minimum, the RDP should at least review the possible disclosure that the border agency has,” said lawyer Tina Hlimi, who has seen more than a dozen cases in her practice since 2019 where Somali clients’ identities were challenged based on this investigative method.

“It’s refreshing to see a different perspective when we have been arguing in vain that border agents are perhaps using facial recognition technology.”

According to the court, in support of her asylum claim, Barre had “an identity witness,” a Canadian citizen from Somalia she had met in Somalia, and a letter from the Somali Multi Service Centre, which had conducted a verification assessment of her knowledge of and connection to Somalia.

Hosh’s refugee acceptance was based on a survey by the Loin Foundation that verified her identity, as well as her ability to speak about the Tunni clan and converse with the interpreter fluently in Somali, the court said.

In their attempts to revoke the women’s refugee status, Canadian officials submitted evidence based on photo comparisons between the women and two Kenyan citizens who arrived in Manitoba as international students, just before Barre’s and Hosh’s refugee claims were made.

Despite the refugees’ objection to the photo comparison and allegation about Clearview AI database being used in their cases, the refugee tribunal agreed with the government that the firm ceased providing services in Canada on July 6, 2020, and an “App that is banned to operate in Canada would certainly not be used by a law enforcement agency such as the CBSA.”

It also found “great similarities” between the photos in either case, even though lawyers for the women had argued that facial recognition software is unreliable and particularly flawed in identifying darker-skinned females in research studies.

The court was critical of the tribunal’s conclusion that Clearview AI was not involved when no inquiry was made as to when the photo comparisons were created in the two cases.

“While the RPD relied upon the fact that the RCMP was the last remaining customer of Clearview AI and stopped using it in 2020, this does not necessarily mean (Canada Border Services Agency) was not using the software when the photographs were collected in 2016 and 2017,” said Go.

“The RPD’s finding that the Minister did not use Clearview AI was not supported by evidence, and it failed to consider the Applicant’s submissions highlighting the danger of relying on facial recognition software.”

Government lawyers argued in court that Barre and Hosh were provided with the photos of the Kenyan women, were aware of the case they had to meet and had the opportunity to respond. The obtaining of the photographs and comparison, they said, was a matter of an investigation done by border officials, and thus subject to non-disclosure privilege.

“The RPD reached a conclusion about the reliability of the photo comparisons based on the Minister’s say-so with no further details about the ‘how.’ It then took the Minister’s word that they must protect the details of their investigation under the Privacy Act without having to demonstrate whether the requirements for non-disclosure, as set out in the Act, were met,” Go said.

“The RPD’s conclusion, which was void of transparency, intelligibility, and justification, must be set aside.”

Lawyer Paul Dineen, who represented Barre and Hosh before the RPD, said the women are not out of the woods as they wait for a new tribunal hearing to decide if they can keep their refugee status.

However, depending on where further arguments go, he said officials are left with two choices.

“They either have to reveal the methods of the investigation or they have to withdraw the photos,” said Dineen.

Both Barre and Hosh declined the Star’s interview requests.

Source: Did Canada use facial-recognition software to strip two refugees of their status? A court wants better answers

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ICYMI: Ottawa capped immigration program for Afghans who worked with Canada since its launch

2022/09/14 1 Comment

Bad marks for transparency but at least adjusted upwards:

When the federal government launched an immigration program for Afghans who worked with Canada’s military or government in Afghanistan, it capped the number of people it was willing to receive at a maximum of 2,500, though did not make that figure public for more than a year.

The cap for the special immigration measures (SIM) program was then gradually increased over several months.

The evolving caps were made public for the first time on Aug. 27 – more than a year after the program began – when the government published the temporary policies behind the program, which provide its legal foundation. The disclosure also shows that the program’s penultimate policy ended in January, at the latest, but a new one didn’t come into effect until June – a gap that two lawyers called “inexplicable.”

Maureen Silcoff and Sujit Choudhry, who have been retained by around 30 Afghan nationals to explore their legal options for securing entry to Canada, also criticized the federal government for capping the program, and for failing to publicize the caps and expiry dates spelled out in the policies from the beginning.

“These measures mean that from its inception, the government created an artificial cap that would inevitably leave Afghans behind to face possible death, because of their significant and enduring connection to Canada,” Ms. Silcoff said.

Opposition MPs and advocates have criticized the federal government for poor communication, long delays and seemingly arbitrary decision making within the SIM program. More than a year after Afghanistan fell to Taliban control, they say many Afghans who worked for Canada are still unsure whether they will eventually receive a shot at safe passage to Canada or be left behind. In the meantime, many are in hiding – in danger of being targeted by the Taliban.

While Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan ended in 2014, the SIM program also applies to Afghans who worked with Canada in the years since, such as at the Canadian embassy in Kabul.

The first time the federal government publicly referenced a limit to the SIM program was on April 25, when Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told the House special committee on Afghanistan that the government planned to welcome 18,000 Afghans through the program. In June, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) confirmed the vast majority of those 18,000 slots were spoken for, prompting widespread calls for the Liberal government to do away with the cap.

The official caps detailed in the government’s policies are not as simple as the 18,000-person plan, however. The first policy, dated July 22, 2021, as well as three updated versions, dated Aug. 9, Aug. 22, and Nov. 10, 2021, were all set to expire when IRCC received applications for a certain number of people – or on Jan. 31, 2022, whichever came first.

The first policy would end “on January 31, 2022, or once applications for 2,500 individuals have been received for resettlement to Canada, whichever comes first.” The subsequent three iterations upped the cap on applications to 5,700, then 9,500, then 14,000.

By the Aug. 22 version, the policy also made clear that the cap included both “principal applicants,” as well as “their family members and or other members of the household.”

Jeffrey MacDonald, an IRCC spokesperson, said in an e-mail the multiple policies for the SIM program reflect the federal government’s “ongoing and increasing” response to the situation in Afghanistan. (Mr. Fraser was not made available for an interview.)

The government’s current policy, dated June 8, 2022, sets out additional slots. It ends when applications for 5,000 people have been “accepted into processing” by IRCC or on March 31, 2023, whichever comes first, “with the view to fulfill the commitment of 18,000 admissions.”

With the Nov. 10, 2021 policy ending on Jan. 31, at the latest, and a new one not coming into effect until June 8, Ms. Silcoff and Mr. Choudhry questioned what took place during this gap. Mr. Choudhry said they found it “utterly inexplicable” that the program’s legal framework was allowed to expire at all – let alone for four months.

Mr. MacDonald did not dispute that there was a policy gap, but said “at no time did we stop processing applications we had received.” When The Globe and Mail followed up to ask whether IRCC issued any new invitations to apply during the four-month period, IRCC did not directly answer.

Instead, a second IRCC spokesperson, Rémi Larivière, said, “the processing of SIMs applications that were submitted prior to January 31, 2022 continued throughout the February – June period.”

Mr. MacDonald also did not directly answer whether the government has produced an estimate of the total number of Afghans it anticipated would qualify for the SIM program. He said the ability of the government and its security screening partners to process and vet applications was a factor in establishing the caps.

Mr. Choudhry said the evolving caps reveal them as arbitrary.

“It just suggests that the government was making up policy on the fly,” he said. “I refuse to believe that after 20 years in Afghanistan, we do not have a reliable estimate of how many individuals would qualify.”

According to IRCC, as of Sept. 7, the department has received 15,340 applications to the SIM program, resulting in 10,880 approvals, with 7,735 Afghans arriving in Canada.

The federal government has acknowledged the danger Afghans are in while they await answers, stating in the June 8 policy that Afghans who worked for Canada are at increased risk of being targeted for “attacks and assassination campaigns” because of that work.

Last week, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, submitted his first report, detailing numerous concerns since the Taliban took control, including a “staggering regression” of women’s and girls’ rights and “reports of ongoing extrajudicial and reprisal killings” by the Taliban.

Source: Ottawa capped immigration program for Afghans who worked with Canada since its launch

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Ibbitson: Will Trudeau’s Liberal government open the door to at-risk Uyghurs?

2022/09/06 Leave a comment

Should be an easy decision to make:

This autumn, the House of Commons will debate a motion from Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi calling on the federal government to accept 10,000 Uyghur refugees who have fled China but are at risk of being deported back, where they would face severe persecution.

That motion achieved greater urgency with the arrival of a United Nations report on Wednesday that states the Chinese government may be guilty of crimes against humanity in its treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities.

The question is whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals government will act to protect Uyghurs at risk. On Thursday, the government was sending mixed signals.

Mr. Zuberi put forward the motion, which calls on the federal government “to expedite the entry of 10,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in need of protection, over two years starting in 2024 into Canada.”

Motions, if passed, are not binding on the government, but they do represent the will of the House.

“Not only are you dealing with extremely vulnerable people, you are also dealing with the compounding issue of genocide,” Mr. Zuberi told me. “The UN report shows how immediate and concrete action on the part of governments is urgently needed.”

The report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights does not use the word “genocide.” But its findings are damning. “Serious human rights violations have been committed” in Xinjiang, concludes outgoing commissioner Michelle Bachelet, that “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

These crimes include arbitrary detention, torture, forced medical treatment, sexual offences, forced birth control, forced labour, suppression of religious freedom and family separations.

“We’ve known about these crimes against humanity for quite a number of years,” said Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, who is a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

“Now we have detailed documentation of the crimes, and official confirmation that all of this is happening.” She urged the federal government to swiftly launch a program that would bring government-sponsored Uyghurs into Canada. “I don’t believe they need to wait until 2024.”

But when the House unanimously declared last year that “a genocide is currently being carried out by the People’s Republic of China against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,” Mr. Trudeau and most of the cabinet stayed away from the vote. Marc Garneau, then foreign affairs minister, abstained, “on behalf of the government of Canada.”

The Trudeau government walks a fine line in its relations with Beijing. It banned the Chinese company Huawei Technologies from participating in the rollout of Canada’s 5G network, but that came long after allied countries made the same decision.

The government is planning new legislation to toughen the rules banning the import of goods produced through forced labour, but we lag behind other countries.

In that context, Thursday was typical. Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly issued a strong statement of support for the UN report. “The release of this much-anticipated report was critical,” it said. “The findings reflect the credible accounts of grave human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang. This report makes an important contribution to the mounting evidence of serious, systemic human rights abuses and violations occurring in Xinjiang.”

However, a statement sent to me by Aiden Strickland, press secretary to Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, was far more cautious. “The safety of Uyghur refugees is a high priority,” Ms. Strickland said. “However, we are not in a position to comment more specifically at this time as it could put this vulnerable population at risk.”

The statement made no mention of the UN report.

Few nations can match Canada’s record for swift action to rescue people at risk. More than 70,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Canada in the past six months; we brought in 25,000 Syrians displaced by civil war seven years ago; and while we have settled fewer than half of 40,000 Afghans at risk that we promised to bring in, at least the commitment is there.

Canada could easily absorb 10,000 Uyghur refugees. And we wouldn’t need to wait until 2024 to bring them here. We could do it right now, and we should.

Let’s hope the House strongly affirms Mr. Zuberi’s motion. Better yet, let’s hope the Trudeau comes to the help of Uyghurs, even if it does offend the regime in Beijing.

Source: Will Trudeau’s Liberal government open the door to at-risk Uyghurs?

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Channel crossings to the UK top 25,000 so far this year

2022/08/30 Leave a comment

By way of comparison, about 20,000 irregular arrivals at Roxham Road between January and July 2022 (virtually all), compared to close to 2 million at the US Southwest land border:

More than 25,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Channel to the UK so far this year, government figures show.

A total of 915 people were detected on Saturday in 19 small boats, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, taking the provisional total for the year to 25,146.

There have been 8,747 crossings in August so far, including 3,733 in the past week, analysis shows.

The highest daily total on record came last Monday, 22 August, with 1,295 people crossing in 27 boats.

It has been more than four months since the home secretary, Priti Patel, unveiled plans to send refugees to Rwanda to try to deter people from crossing the Channel. Since then, 19,878 people have arrived in the UK after making the journey.

Source: Channel crossings to the UK top 25,000 so far this year

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Canada less than halfway to Afghan resettlement goal one year after Taliban takeover

2022/08/16 Leave a comment

Of note. Not an easy process for those trying to get out but arguably IRCC capacity has been overly stretched given overall government priorities and related backlogs:

A year after the Taliban seized control of Kabul, Canada’s resettlement efforts have lagged behind official targets and the efforts to help those fleeing the war in Ukraine.

More than 17,300 Afghans have arrived in Canada since last August compared to 71,800 Ukrainians who have come to Canada in 2022 alone, according to government statistics. The federal government has promised to resettle 40,000 Afghans.

Canadian activists and MPs accuse the Liberals of not doing enough to help people who worked with the Canadian Forces in the country, including as interpreters.

They say some families are in hiding from the Taliban as they await approval of their immigration applications, while others have been split up, with children and spouses of applicants left behind.

New Democrat MP Jenny Kwan, who has been in contact with many Afghan refugees who worked with Canadian Forces, said there is a “stark difference” between the government’s treatment of those fleeing the Taliban and those fleeing the Russian invasion.

She said the situation for Afghans who helped Canada is “grave,” with many unable to escape the country and facing persecution by the Taliban.

She said some received no reply to their applications from the immigration department other than an automated response. Others seeking visas from the Taliban authorities to escape their regime were put in peril if they identified themselves.

“Their lives are in danger. They told me what the Taliban are calling them: they are called ‘the Western dogs,'” Kwan said.

“We owe them a debt of gratitude. We cannot abandon them.”

Amanda Moddejonge, a military veteran and activist, said she has witnessed families being split up, with only some making it to Canada. She also warned that Afghans who worked for Canadian Forces “are being hunted” by the Taliban.

“Nobody should face death for working for the Government of Canada, especially when this government can identify those who worked for them and is able to provide them life-saving assistance,” she said.

The warnings come as aid agencies working in Afghanistan raise alarms that the country is in a dire humanitarian crisis, with 18.9 million people facing acute hunger.

Asuntha Charles, national director of World Vision Afghanistan, said aid workers have encountered acute poverty and malnutrition, including among children.

“At least one million children are on the brink of starvation, and at least 36 per cent of Afghan children suffer from stunting — being small for their age — a common and largely irreversible effect of malnutrition,” she said.

“In the four areas we work, we’ve found that families live on less than a dollar day. This has forced seven out of 10 boys and half of all girls to work to help their families instead of going to school.”

Vincent Hughes, a spokesman for immigration minister Sean Fraser, said the Afghan and Ukrainian immigration programs are very different.

He said refugees who arrived through programs set up to bring them to Canada have a right to stay permanently, whereas it’s believed many Ukrainians who have fled to Canada intend eventually to return to Ukraine.

Helping get people out of Afghanistan and to Canada was very challenging, he added, as Canada has no diplomatic presence there and does not recognize the Taliban government.

“Our commitment of bringing at least 40,000 vulnerable Afghans to Canada has not wavered, and it remains one of the largest programs around the world,” he said.

“The situation in Afghanistan is unique as we are facing challenges that have not been present in other large-scale resettlement initiatives.”

Source: Canada less than halfway to Afghan resettlement goal one year after Taliban takeover

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Falconer: Report says Canada should loosen visa requirements to allow more Ukrainian refugees

2022/08/13 Leave a comment

Of note. But should this be an addition to current levels or at the expense of economic or family class? Or to fulfill some of the labour demand currently being filled by Temporary Foreign Workers? And would waiving the visa requirement create pressures to do the same for other refugees?

A new report says Canada needs to change its federal visa policy to speed up the admission of Ukrainian refugees, which has slowed to a trickle.

The study by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy released Thursday says that compared to other countries, Canada has received a small number of the millions of Ukrainians who have been displaced since Russia invaded the eastern European country in February.

“Applications by Ukrainians are starting to far outstrip the number that are being granted by the Canadian government and we don’t even have a really clear picture of how many Ukrainians are coming into the country,” said author Robert Falconer.

Statistics show the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program, which expedites visas and temporary residency permits for Ukrainians and their families, isn’t enough, he said.

As of June 22, there were approximately 190,000 Ukrainians with pending applications to come to Canada, up from 140,000 about one month earlier.

Falconer said the program, requiring those arriving to have visas, is to blame for Canada lagging behind other countries — most notably Ireland, which has waived its visa requirement.

“One of the objections within the committee in Parliament was if we let Ukrainians in, then Russian spies would use that to infiltrate the system,” he said.

“Russian espionage does exist, but the refugee channel is one of the more inefficient ways to try and infiltrate a Russian spy into the country.”

Falconer said federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, with proper resources, would be able to manage security risks involving the visa process. He recommends Canada adopt the Irish model or another option to do visa checks once people arrive.

“If we’re not doing the Irish model, I would say we do what’s called the on-arrival model, which is what a lot of countries do. When you arrive at the airport, you have to wait for a small period while the government officials run the security checks,” Falconer said.

“You do some risk assessments and can probably vet that eight-year-old kid who is probably not a Russian spy whereas an unaccompanied male in their mid-20s … you might hold them while you process the background check and let them into the country. Let them get here to safety first and then process them from there.”

Falconer said an overwhelming number of Canadians support bringing in a high number of Ukrainian refugees and our country has the highest percentage of people of Ukrainian descent next to Ukraine and Russia.

The report says Canada and the United Kingdom have similar processes for the admission of Ukrainian refugees and the numbers are comparable.

It says about 13 times the number of Ukrainian refugees per capita arrived in Ireland than in the United Kingdom during the first two months of the invasion.

Falconer said the findings of the report are to be forwarded to the federal government, but he isn’t sure whether it would result in a loosening of the requirements.

“I think they’re probably aware. I think they are very, very, very concerned — less with Ukrainians and more with how the overall immigration file is going generally.”

Source: Report says Canada should loosen visa requirements to allow more Ukrainian refugees

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Canadians are seeking asylum in US due to Trudeau’s Covid policies

2022/08/10 Leave a comment

Funny and sad that some think they can apply for asylum in the USA given COVID-related restrictions. At least the lawyer involved is reasonable honest about the likelihood of success (while pocketing his fees). “True” North is not exactly innocent in promoting such beliefs:

Buffalo immigration lawyer Matthew Kolken has filed asylum applications for at least half a dozen Canadians who hope to flee the country permanently due to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pandemic policies. 

In an exclusive interview with True North, Kolken, who is a former director of the Board of Governors of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, explained that his clients fear being persecuted for being unvaccinated should they return to Canada.

“If you just don’t want to go back to Canada, you actually need to fear that you will be the victim of targeted persecution by the Government of Canada or by groups within the country that the government either can’t or won’t protect you from,” said Kolken. 

“(The application) says they’ve either expressed some sort of political speech or a member of a particular social group like unvaccinated individuals that have faced persecution before either through seizing of bank accounts, or loss of employment, or forced quarantines, things of that nature.”

According to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, those seeking asylum must apply within one year of arriving in the country. Groundsfor seeking asylum include suffering persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. 

An application filed by Kolken in January for one client cited the Liberal government’s crackdown on the Freedom Convoy in February. To deal with the situation, Trudeau took the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act which enabled the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters.

Kolken stated that his clients were also “scared to death” of being singled out by the Trudeau government for speaking out against vaccine mandates or have their employment opportunities limited. 

“They’re scared to death that if they go back to Canada they will be singled out and isolated by the Government of Canada, they will be unable to travel,” said Kolken.

“They’re afraid they wouldn’t get onto a plane in Canada and they will be trapped within their own country and that their abilities to obtain employment are limited there.”

Although the Liberals lifted travel mandates which prohibited unvaccinated Canadians from boarding a plane and train domestically or abroad, public health officials have not ruled out re-introducing restrictions in the future. 

“[If] COVID-19 takes a turn for the worst and we need to readjust and go back to a different regime, maybe similar to what we might have had before, we’re ready to do that,” said Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Howard Njoo in June. “We have no idea what the long term success rate is but I counsel my clients over the phone, the applications that clearly are justifiable under the law and regulations. They set forth a bonafide non-frivolous case.”

He also warned those seeking asylum that the Safe Third Country Agreement which dictates asylum applications between Canada and the US could be used against them. 

“The Safe Third Country Agreement cannot differentiate either country’s treaty obligations to accept asylees from one of the two contracting countries. You can’t say that because of the Safe Third Country Agreement that nobody who is a Canadian citizen can’t apply for asylum in the United States.”

Source: Canadians are seeking asylum in US due to Trudeau’s Covid policies

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Uganda’s loss is Canada’s gain

2022/07/30 Leave a comment

Good reminder of a good program, one that has benefited both the refugees and Canada:

On Aug. 5, 1972, within two years of overthrowing the elected Ugandan government of Milton Obote, General Idi Amin Dada made the following decree: “All British Asians numbering about 80,000 will have to be repatriated to Britain—they must leave within 90 days. Non-citizens of other nationalities (other than Uganda) must also leave within three months.”

Although Amin’s decree supposedly targeted only British and other non-Ugandan South Asians, the reality was that it affected all South Asians; citizens as well as non-citizens. Random incidents of harassment, robbery, arbitrary imprisonment, and intimidation targeted the entire South Asian community—regardless of their status or citizenship. In effect, South Asians in Uganda—who were long-settled and included Hindus, Muslims, Sikh, and Christians—became stateless. While many of the Asians carried British passports, and therefore were the responsibility of Britain, others needed to find countries to accept them.

Canada responded. On Aug. 24, 1972, then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau announced Canada’s intervention and the expeditious dispatch of a Canadian mission to Kampala with the following statement: “For our part, we are prepared to offer an honourable place in Canadian life to those Uganda Asians who come to Canada under this program. Asian immigrants have already added to the cultural richness and variety of our country and, I am sure that those from Uganda will, by their abilities and industry, make an equally important contribution to Canadian society.”

A Canadian team was quickly assembled and sent to Kampala under the leadership of Roger St. Vincent, whose instructions stated: “Your Mission is to proceed to Kampala and by whatever means undertake to process without numerical limitations those Asians who meet the immigration selection criteria bearing in mind their particular plight and facilitate their departure for Canada. Your mission must be accomplished by November 8.”

From Sept. 6 to Nov. 7, 1972, Canadian officials worked non-stop to process, interview, carry out medical exams, arrange transport, and grant visas to more than 6,000 South Asians.

Those families who were unable to gain acceptance by any state were assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and transported from Uganda into refugee camps in Europe including Austria, Sweden, Italy, and Malta. Subsequently, more than 2,000 of these refugees were accepted by Canada.

On Aug. 24, 1972, then-prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced Canada’s intervention and dispatched a mission to Uganda that granted visas to more than 6,000 South Asians by the end of the year. 

In the end, between 1972 and 1974, Canada accepted more than 8,000 South Asian Ugandans, many of whom were Ismaili Muslims and Goans, as they were mostly Ugandan passport holders. Fearing what happened in Uganda, many South Asians from Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo subsequently immigrated to Canada.

Beyond the obvious humanitarian relief it provided, Canada’s response in the Ugandan South Asian exodus holds important political and historical significance. Although Canada had responded to many refugee movements in the past, this was the first time that it responded to a large-scale non-European refugee crisis, and it came on the heels of the adoption of Canada’s Multiculturalism Policy in 1971.

The successful integration of the Ugandan South Asian community over the last 50 years has been a testament of this policy, which supports linguistic, ethno-cultural, and ethno-racial pluralism.

Today, the Ugandan South Asians, most who fled their homeland with virtually the clothes on their backs, are well represented in all walks of Canadian life due to their pursuit of education, tradition of self-reliance, business acumen, and strong work ethic. After five decades, the community’s social and cultural integration may be explained, in part, by an ongoing reference and dedication to the values of the country which gave it asylum and a permanent home.

In the corridors of Parliament, Senator Mobina Jaffer was the first South Asian woman appointed to the Upper House in 2001, and Liberal Arif Virani has served as Member of Parliament for Parkdale–High Park, Ont., since 2015 and is currently the parliamentary secretary to the minister of international trade. In Alberta, the Honourable Salma Lakhani was installed as Alberta’s 19th lieutenant governor in August 2020, and in the Canadian foreign service, Arif Lalani has served as Canada’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

In the world of news media, Omar Sachedina, whose parents fled Uganda, is a well-known national affairs correspondent and also serves as a fill-in anchor on CTV National News. After working on Parliament Hill for a number of years, Farah Mohamed went on to be a founder of G(irls)20, and previously served as the CEO of the Malala Fund.

One of the world’s largest transportation engineering software companies is co-founded and led by Milton Carrasco. Dax Dasilva, whose parents also fled Uganda, founded Lightspeed Commerce, which is one of Canada largest publicly traded technology companies in Canada.

In business-philanthropy, Pyarali and Gulshan Nanji and their children have exemplified giving back to Canada, including significant donations to many hospitals. Recently, to mark the 50th anniversary of the South Asian exodus from Uganda, the Nanji Family Foundation announced that it would be providing university scholarships to 50 young refugees across the world with a $1-million family donation to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

In opening its doors to the Ugandan Asians in 1972, Canada gained a community, which has since become renowned for both entrepreneurial enterprise and community service. The process of their settlement and integration has left an indelible mark upon the conscious of the community, including civic responsibility, pride in culture and community, ethically compassionate, and pursuing the public good. Uganda’s loss was Canada’s gain.

Michael Molloy was a member of the team that travelled to Kampala and arranged for 6,000 Ugandan Asians to come to Canada in 1972. He was subsequently involved in redesigning Canada’s refugee-resettlement system and was senior co-ordinator of the program that brought 60,000 Indochinese refugees to Canada in 1979-80. Salim Fakirani is a senior lawyer with the Department of Justice. Fakirani’s family fled Uganda when he was two years old. His family immigrated to Canada after spending almost a year in a refugee camp administered by the UNHCR in Italy.

Source: Uganda’s loss is Canada’s gain

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Kuluberhan: Why do some asylum seekers make it into the West quickly – while others have to wait more than a decade?

2022/07/27 Leave a comment

More questioning of double standards. Reality is a bit more complex than presented as Canada’s response to Syrian refugees attests (but not so with respect to Afghan refugees):

They were middle-class Europeans who looked more like the family living next door than the refugees Western countries had become so accustomed to seeing trickle across their borders. At least, that’s how Western news media and politicians often depicted the Ukrainian citizens who were forced to flee their homes following the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

As a second-generation Canadian and the daughter of two Eritrean refugees, the distinctions made between refugees felt like textbook dog-whistles that were impossible to ignore. Indeed, when I travelled to Ethiopia and visited my uncle this past May, I witnessed first-hand how refugees who don’t look like people who might live next door – who come from places that are not seen as “civilized” – have become forgotten casualties of broken asylum systems.

Picture this: You grow up living in an eight-bedroom home in a residential neighbourhood two hours outside the capital city. Your father runs a public transportation business, and your mother is a shopkeeper who sells spices. You and your seven siblings attend the only private school in town. The life you lead is a good one – until one day, the political situation in your country changes and suddenly your family loses everything. Before you know it, nearly two decades pass by in the refugee camp where you’ve been waiting in limbo for your asylum papers to arrive.

This is my uncle’s story, in a nutshell. Despite hailing from Ethiopia, the life he led prior to the 1998 Ethiopia-Eritrea border war was not all that different from the life of your average middle-class Canadian citizen. Yet December will mark 18 years since my uncle first filed an asylum claim in 2004. He does not “seem so like us,” as one Telegraph writer described Ukrainian asylum seekers – and there is no telling when his ordeal will end.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government announced measures in March that would fast-track the arrival of an unlimited number of Ukrainians fleeing the war and allow them to apply for a renewable three-year temporary residence. Many wondered why the same quick action couldn’t be taken for the refugees who have languished in the system for years. But during a CBS News broadcast report from Kyiv in late February, senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata voiced what had to that point been largely implicit: Ukraine, he declared, “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.”

Research studies have long indicated that lengthy asylum processes adversely affect the mental health of refugee claimants, leading to an increased risk of life-long psychiatric disorders. My uncle is no exception. After my uncle spent15 years in the Shimelba camp in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, we lost all contact with him for two years until 2021, when he was found homeless on the streets of Addis Ababa. When I met him, his mental health had deteriorated to such a point that my family decided to pool resources and place him in a private facility where he could receive treatment for depression while he continued waiting to be granted asylum.

While his case is an extreme one, long asylum wait-times are not uncommon. In a 2017 memo, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada estimated that by 2021, wait times for asylum claims would take up to 11 years – much closer to the bleak reality faced by refugees than the projected 24-month period indicated on the board’s website.

Canada moving at a breakneck speed to implement targeted supports for Ukrainian asylum seekers was a reminder that our refugee policies are not race-blind commitments to humanitarianism. Who a country welcomes across its borders and into its society reveals who that country believes belongs, who doesn’t, and which lives are worth saving.

Criticism of slow resettlement processes are usually met with the excuse that the increase in the number of asylum claims has placed an untenable weight on a system already weakened by a mounting backlog. Yet the response to the Ukraine crisis, in Canada and elsewhere, has revealed how governments in the West can operate like well-oiled machines when they feel the need.

Of course, we should applaud our government for the exemplary support it provided to Ukrainians in need. Now we must urge them to apply this same urgency and care to all refugees, equally.

Hermona Kuluberhan is an Ottawa-based writer currently completing a master’s in journalism at Carleton University.

Source: Why do some asylum seekers make it into the West quickly – while others have to wait more than a decade? 

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Tories, advocates call on Ottawa to remove bureaucratic hurdles to resettling Afghans

2022/07/23 Leave a comment

Needed:

Opposition Conservatives are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to extend a special immigration program it set up to bring Afghans trying to flee the Taliban to Canada.

Tory MP Jasraj Singh Hallan says Ottawa has failed in its moral obligation to help people who assisted Canada with its military mission in Afghanistan and now face reprisals from the Taliban, which seized control of Kabul last year.

Trudeau’s government had announced plans to resettle 40,000 Afghans and put in place several programs through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to help meet the goal.

Among those was a special immigration program to which Afghan nationals could apply if they had assisted members of the Canadian Armed Forces as interpreters or worked at Canada’s embassy.

Ottawa made room for 18,000 Afghans to come to Canada through this program.

According to the federal government’s website, it has received around 15,000 applications, 10,730 of which have been approved.

It reports that 7,205 Afghans have actually arrived through the program.

“It took the government a year to process less than half of the Afghans who applied through these measures,” Hallan said at a news conference Thursday.

He said a recent decision by the Ottawa to wind down the program because nearly all of the application spots are full is “shameful.”

Hallan also questioned why caps were placed on these programs in the first place, including the government’s overall commitment of taking 40,000 Afghans, when there are thousands more in danger.

Speaking in Nova Scotia on Thursday, Trudeau didn’t directly address whether Ottawa would expand the special measures program, but said one of the challenges is that there are hundreds of thousands of Afghans who would like to leave.

Hallan was joined at his news conference by two Afghans who managed to leave and make it to Canada.

Saeeq Shajjan, a lawyer, said colleagues have spent 11 months waiting to hear back from the federal immigration department, a delay he says is unacceptable.

He pointed out the situation is nothing like routine family reunification where a relative is waiting safely in another country to come to Canada.

“You’re talking about people who are at risk right now just because of the services they provided to the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, and it really needs to change now.”

Rahima Paiman, who was among those evacuated to Canada last year, said some Afghans are hiding in third countries, adding that women face particular risk under Taliban rule.

“Those women who did their best in Afghanistan are now in danger. Their very lives are at risk. I’m requesting you to please not stop supporting women in Afghanistan.”

Source: Tories, advocates call on Ottawa to remove bureaucratic hurdles to resettling Afghans

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