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

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

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

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , , , ,

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

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , ,

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? 

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

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

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

Refugee sponsor groups accuse Ottawa of ‘breach of agreement’ as families wait to reunite

2022/07/12 Leave a comment

Another example of IRCC operational difficulties? The Mennonites are one of the easiest and most reasonable groups to work with:

More than 100 groups across Canada that have formal agreements with Ottawa to privately sponsor refugees are accusing the federal government of breaching their agreements, leaving them unable to help vulnerable people.

These groups, known as Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAHs), are religious, humanitarian, or community organizations that assume the full financial, legal and logistical obligations related to settling refugees in Canada. They often work with smaller community groups that handle the fundraising and arrange, among other things, housing, schools, and jobs.

Every year, SAHs are each allotted a certain number of refugees — for a combined total of roughly 10,000 to 12,000 — for whom they can submit applications to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which then carries out interviews, medical check-ups, and security clearance.

The Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders Association (SAH Council) wrote a letter to the federal minister, Shawn Fraser, on June 20 to complain that Ottawa still hasn’t given its members their annual allotment of sponsorship spaces, which it says is “a breach of the Sponsorship Agreement.” It’s calling for the immediate release of 2022 allocations.

“SAH’s are facing a quickly diminishing window of time to submit new sponsorship applications within this calendar year,” the Council said, adding that it’s difficult to plan or confirm support to vulnerable refugee families.

“It’s frustrating,” said Mark Bigland-Pritchard, a migration and resettlement coordinator for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a faith-based agency that’s had a sponsorship agreement with Ottawa for about 40 years.

“The bulk of our allocation, we just cannot submit until the time comes that they permit us to.”

These delays endanger thousands of people who are facing persecution or living in dangerous places, he said.

Families separated, refugees at risk

Three applications that are still sitting on his desk, ready to be submitted, belong to nine-year-old Adnan Kharsa’s parents and sister. As CBC News reported in April, the Syrian boy has been separated from his family, who are in Turkey, for five years. He made it to Saskatoon with his grandmother and uncle as a privately-sponsored refugee last year.

Adnan’s aunt, Doha Kharsa, who lives in Saskatoon, formed a sponsorship group in the community and raised $40,000 to privately sponsor Adnan’s parents and sister. Then, she teamed up with MCC, as the sponsorship agreement holder, to submit their applications as part of its 2022 allotment.

Bigland-Pritchard says MCC is normally allotted about 400 spaces a year, and those numbers are usually confirmed in February. That didn’t happen this year. In May, the federal government allowed each sponsorship agreement holder in Canada to submit 25 applications.

Kharsa was disappointed to learn Ottawa hasn’t accepted more applications, including hers.

“It’s shocking,” she said. “I don’t know how to tell my mom, or even Adnan, or even my brother in Turkey about this.”

“I don’t understand why. The money is there. The applications are ready to go. So why the delay?”

In the letter to Fraser, the SAH Council said it “acknowledged the tremendous pressure IRCC currently faces in its response to multiple global crises.” It said IRCC had indicated to SAH Council that the delay is, in part, due to what it called “processing challenges” at the Resettlement Operations Centre in Ottawa.

In a statement to CBC News, IRCC did not offer an explanation for the delays.

“The Department is actively working to release the remaining 2022 allocations to SAHs,” said the statement attributed to a spokesperson for Fraser.

“We can confirm that we received a letter from the Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAH) Association and will be responding directly to address their concerns. We look forward to continuing our working relationship with the Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders.”

2-3 year wait after application goes in

Bigland-Pritchard said it’s critical to resume steady sponsorship submissions because getting the application into the system is only the first step.

After that, the processing time for MCC’s privately-sponsored refugees is about two to three years. For example, MCC is still waiting for half of the refugees they applied for in 2019 to arrive in Canada, and most of the people they applied for in 2020 haven’t arrived.

Source: Refugee sponsor groups accuse Ottawa of ‘breach of agreement’ as families wait to reunite

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Ian Mulgrew: Refugee says foreign buyers property tax discriminates

2022/06/20 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see how the court rules. Pretty wealthy refugee given the value of the property tax:
An Iranian refugee who has lived in Canada for 27 years but only recently obtained permanent resident status wants to be reimbursed for the $1.32-million foreign buyers property tax he paid for his West Vancouver home.
In a B.C. Supreme Court statement of claim filed recently, Kourosh Bakhtiari, who has been described in documents as an aspiring terrorist decades ago for convictions on weapons charges and who once escaped custody using s rope made of dental floss, maintains that a 61-month delay in granting him permanent resident status violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, causing him duress and unnecessary expense.“His case shows how the foreign buyers property surtax in part harms a group of homeowners it is intended to help — long-term residents of B.C. without formal immigration status who wish to express their roots in this territory through home ownership,” veteran Vancouver lawyer Jason Gratl said.

Bakhtiari, who has no criminal record in Canada, was initially ruled inadmissible to the country by the Immigration and Refugee Board because of his crimes in the U.S., and was issued a conditional deportation order on April 9, 1996.

But he fought that and was designated a refugee on May 27, 1998.Ten years earlier, Bakhtiari was caught attempting to buy a Manhattan apartment while impersonating a State Department employee.

His briefcase contained weapons — including a 9 mm M-11 semi-automatic pistol, a silencer for the gun, a knife, grenades, and a garrote.

He and two other inmates reportedly later escaped from New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center using a rope fashioned out of 15 packages of dental floss braided together.

While recuperating in a New York hospital after being captured, he tried unsuccessfully to flee again.

Deported to Iran after a stint in a U.S. prison, Bakhtiari came to Canada and claimed political asylum on Dec. 10, 1995, fearing torture in Iran because in 1984 his father was captured, tortured, and killed for leading a revolt against the Islamic regime.

He applied to the immigration minister for permanent resident status in 1997, but was denied due to his U.S. convictions and his failure to pay a fine. Bakhtiari wrongly assumed that the fine would be paid from seized assets.On Dec. 15, 2011, more than 100 police officers converged on five locations, including Bakhtiari’s company offices, in a dramatic raid that netted more than $220,000 and four kilograms of methamphetamine.

Nevertheless, police apologized in 2017 for “Project Enape,” which targeted Bakhtiari’s firm for manufacturing legal pharmaceuticals and male hair-growth products allegedly because it was linked to organized crime. Civil proceedings in the case resulted in the forfeiture of seized cash.

In 2014, Bakhtiari again attempted to apply for permanent resident status. This application was again refused. He applied once more in January 2017.

Bakhtiari was finally granted permanent resident status this past Feb. 16, although no explanation was given for the delay.

He alleges the process took three times longer than average and was the product of gross negligence and bad faith by the minister.

During this waiting period, Bakhtiari, on July 1, 2021, was forced to pay $1.32 million in surtax on the June 14, 2019, purchase of a home registered in his company’s name on Groveland Road  in West Vancouver. He lives there.

He appealed, but on Feb. 29 was deemed ineligible for an exemption because he had not received permanent resident status within one year of the purchase — the process had taken 32 months.

The lawsuit, filed by Bakhtiari and his firm, Technocorp Venture Capital Inc., alleges the tax not only imposes an enormous financial burden on Bakhtiari but sends an implicit government-sponsored message that he is the kind of person who should be discouraged from owning a home in B.C.“The immigration minister’s delay in processing his application for permanent resident status contributed to the imposition of the surtax and loss of dignity, loss of social status, psychological distress and anxiety resulting from the imposition of the surtax and the implicit message of the surtax,” the lawsuit alleges.

Bakhtiari wants to be reimbursed for the surtax, the lien removed, the law amended, and paid damages.

“Discrimination against Bakhtiari, who has been a resident of British Columbia for 27 years, is contrary to the true intention of the legislature,” Gratl said.

He added that the purpose of the surtax is to promote home ownership by long-term residents and the one-year limit is arbitrary and unreasonable.

The attorney-general has told the court that persons in Bakhtiari’s position should not be subject to the surtax.

“The immigration minister’s unjustified delay of more than five years to process my client’s application for permanent resident status deprived him of an exemption from the 20-per-cent foreign buyer property surtax,” Gratl said.

“It might be tempting to believe that the wealthy are not entitled to civil liberties, but in law the right of equality belongs to everyone.”

The federal and provincial governments have roughly three weeks after they receive a copy of the suit to respond.

Source: Ian Mulgrew: Refugee says foreign buyers property tax discriminates

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , ,

Canada was urged to plan Afghan evacuation months before fall of Kabul, documents show

2022/06/17 Leave a comment

A major fail, consequences still with the Afghans trying to reach here. Other countries also had issues but we do not fair well in comparison:

More than three months before Kabul fell to the Taliban, Global Affairs Canada was urging the federal government to make special immigration plans for its domestic staff in Afghanistan, according to official documents.

At a meeting on May 3, 2021, GAC’s assistant deputy minister Paul Thoppil raised the issue with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, based on the “specific threats” the domestic staff faced amid “a deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.”

“This issue has been raised since 2012 and discussed at various levels within GAC and between GAC and IRCC,” say heavily redacted briefing notes obtained by the Star under an access-to-information request.

“The recent announcement of full U.S. drawdown by Sept. 11, 2021, brings new urgency.”

It is unclear what came out of that meeting, but it took until almost 12 weeks later, on July 22, for then-immigration minister Marco Mendicino to sign and approve a new special program, announced the next day, to resettle the Afghans in Canada. One of the issues in the delay appeared to be the indecisiveness over the scope of the program and whether former interpreters for Canadian forces should qualify.

“Lives hang in the balance, which is why we’re taking timely and decisive action,” Mendicino said in a statement then. “Canada will do right by those who did so much for us.”

His announcement officially started the process, but less than a month later, Afghanistan’s capital abruptly fell to the Taliban. Thousands of Afghan applicants to Canada didn’t get out in time.

The U.S. government and the Taliban had struck a deal in 2020 providing for an end to their hostilities and a full NATO withdrawal the next year. Starting in May 2021, the Taliban began a major offensive, advancing as western forces withdrew, and Afghans who aided western governments were considered in danger of recrimination.

Wendy Long, founder of Afghan Canadian Interpreters, says she and others advocated for years to have a proper program to resettle at-risk Afghans but successive governments did not see the urgency.

“We had nothing, absolutely nothing, even though we had been in communication … passing information along to all of the different entities — IRCC, GAC and DND (Department of National Defence). They didn’t announce anything until July 23. By then, it’s too late,” Long told the Star.

A Star request for briefing reports on the Afghan evacuation and resettlement efforts got a 46-page response, though 20 pages were blacked out. 

Notes from a June 17, 2021 meeting between IRCC and GAC said immigration officials had drafted an approval memo and a public policy for the resettlement and that an “internal review” was underway.

During the meeting, eligibility for resettlement in Canada was set based on a list provided by the head of the diplomatic mission in Afghanistan. The measures, it said, would only apply to local staff, their family and “de facto dependents.”

Immigration officials also instructed the mission to distribute permanent-residence application forms and related documents so the department could be ready to launch the public policy. “This does not constitute an application, just preparation,” the briefing note said.

On June 18, 2021, another note said the Afghans would only travel to Canada if the embassy was ordered to close or evacuate, while officials started preparing for a second scenario in which the embassy remained open but faced ongoing security risks amid calls to resettle local staff.

The United Kingdom had already launched a plan by April to bring over current and former local Afghan staff, followed by similar efforts by other European countries. In mid-July, the White House, in addition to its special visa program for former Afghan staff, also unveiled Operation Allies Refuge to airlift at-risk Afghans. 

Long noted Germans had a similar special visa program and “just expanded that program, realizing the situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating.”

In Ottawa, an update on July 12 said that the approval memo and yet-announced special policy were “routing” to Mendicino’s office, which appeared to be still undecided about the scope of the program.

The update cautioned that interpreters were not included in the public policy “due to the complexity of defining the parameters” of such a measure. 

Canadian political parties were, meanwhile, gearing up in anticipation of a snap federal election ultimately called by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Aug. 15, the day Kabul fell.

“When people are actively campaigning, technically their offices are in a caretaker’s mode. The speed of being able to react to situations or to implement policy changes is restricted,” said Long.

“We could’ve averted it being a complete crisis, had we acted earlier.”

An immigration operational update issued on July 23 said Mendicino finally approved the two special measures — for local staff and those with “enduring and significant relationship” with Canada, e.g. interpreters, drivers, contractors and cooks — but added that the timing of their departure was subject to GAC and DND operational requirements.

“Now that public announcement has been made, IRCC will begin contacting clients to obtain applications,” it said in the July 23, 2021 update. 

Another update on July 26 warned, “Given that the security situation is quickly deteriorating on the ground, the window for departures from Afghanistan of applicants is by Aug. 23, 2021, with potentially a first cohort leaving as early as Aug. 1, 2021.”

The first planeload of Afghan refugees would not arrive in Canada until Aug. 4. On Aug. 13, the Liberal government announced a plan to bring 20,000 vulnerable Afghans — a number it later doubled — to the country. 

On Aug. 15, militants waving Taliban flags entered Kabul and embattled president Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Afghan applicants to Canada who weren’t out by then found there was no Canadian embassy to take or process applications, and Taliban checkpoints made it difficult to escape.

“Justin Trudeau and Minister Mendicino both owe these Afghans an apology … this mismanagement has allowed for families to be separated and thousands that stuck their necks out for Canada to still be stuck in Afghanistan,” says Andrew Rusk of Not Left Behind, an advocacy group for at-risk Afghans.

“When other people sent planes and helicopters, we sent emails.”

As of last Friday, the federal government said Ottawa had welcomed 15,475 vulnerable Afghans to the country, including 6,985 who assisted Canada’s mission (along with their families).

“Although there remains more work to do, I applaud the many people and partners who have helped us bring more than 15,000 Afghan nationals to safety,” said Sean Fraser, successor to Mendicino, who is now the public safety minister. 

“We are proud of what we have accomplished so far and remain determined to do more to help Afghan refugees.”

Nancy Caron, spokesperson for the immigration department, said it was “an unprecedented challenge” to design the program and implement it in a war zone amid a rapidly deteriorating security situation, especially with the end of Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan in 2014.

The Afghan’s resettlement initiative was immediately underway as NATO troops began withdrawal from Afghanistan on May 1, 2021, with the goal to complete as much processing as possible prior to any evacuation order being given, she said.

Caron said in an email to the Star that “given the volatile and fast-evolving situation, the public policy was adjusted to reflect the changing needs on the ground. Signing the public policy just prior to its announcement allowed the government to remain nimble and adapt to an ever-changing environment as we worked to get as many people out as possible.”

A government source familiar with the planning of the resettlement scheme said the original version drafted by immigration staff was too narrow and required a lot of “back and forth” changes to cover a broader mandate to include interpreters and others who worked for Canada during the military mission.

There were logistical challenges but also resistance within the immigration department, which had been overwhelmed by a skyrocketing immigration and citizenship backlog that reached two million applicants during the pandemic, said the source, who spoke with the Star on background.

“It was just repeatedly, ‘We don’t have the capacity to do this.’ “The (immigration) minister was pushing and saying, ‘Go back and do this. Go back and try that,’” said the source.

“Obviously everyone thought they would have more time.”

Source: Canada was urged to plan Afghan evacuation months before fall of Kabul, documents show

Filed under Immigration, Refugees

UN agency concerned about impact of Canada’s immigration backlog on refugees

2022/05/27 Leave a comment

Of note. Implementation and delivery matters:

The UN refugee agency says it is concerned about the impact of Canada’s immigration backlog on the federal government’s commitment to resettle the world’s most vulnerable people, including Afghans who risk being targeted by the Taliban as they await refugee protection.

Gillian Triggs, assistant high commissioner for protection at the United Nations refugee agency, said Canada’s immigration backlog of more than two million applications is “very distressing.”

Refugee advocates and the opposition parties in Ottawa have repeatedly expressed concern that Canada’s overrun immigration system is delaying resettlement for refugees.

Ms. Triggs, who met senior government officials in Ottawa Wednesday, said refugees face increased risks the longer their cases are stuck in government processing.

“I will be raising with the relevant deputy ministers and others our concerns about that backlog. What it does, of course, is expose people to the kind of dangers that you’re raising, of torture, attacks – the very dangers, of course, that underpin why they have refugee status in the first place,” Ms. Triggs said in an interview.

“The whole point of the need for refugee protection is that that needs to be fast. You cannot leave people in backlogs and pipelines for many months or, in some cases in some countries, for years.”

Earlier this month, The Globe and Mail reported that Afghans who aided Canada’s military and diplomatic missions in Afghanistan have been tortured by the Taliban while they struggle to navigate federal government red tape.

Concerns grew further on May 14 when a 24-year-old Afghan man who was urgently seeking protection from Canada was shot dead by the Taliban. While Ms. Triggs was careful not to comment on specific cases, she expressed concern about the fate of Afghan women, who now face more restrictions under Taliban rule.

Ms. Triggs said the COVID-19 pandemic bogged down immigration processes in many resettlement countries, such as Canada, which are now trying to catch up amid an “unsustainable” increase in the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide. An unprecedented 100 million people have been forcibly displaced by conflict, violence, human-rights violations and persecution, the UN refugee agency announced Monday.

“Part of the advocacy that we will engage in is to encourage governments to look at their processes to see if they can be made what we call fair and fast,” Ms. Triggs said.

She said she is not qualified to suggest specific system changes for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), but cited instances in which other countries have forgone their “cumbersome” immigration policies in the interests of urgency. For example, she said Poland, Slovakia and Moldova immediately opened their borders to Ukrainian refugees earlier this year when Russia invaded.

She also said a move toward digital application systems will speed up processing in resettlement countries.

IRCC did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Immigration Minister Sean Fraser has previously said the Liberal government’s investments in additional resources, including $85-million to help reduce the backlogs and 500 new processing staff, should help IRCC return to its prepandemic processing times by the end of the year.

Ms. Triggs said resettlement programs are available to less than 1 per cent of globally displaced people, which is why she said governments need to work to address the root causes of mass displacement. She said Canada can be a leader on this front, particularly in Central America, where violence and persecution have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

“Canada can play a role in looking at root causes in the region, at stabilizing populations, advocating for investments for finding ways to deal with gender inequality, with the abuse of women and girls, poverty and of course, instability,” she said.

Ms. Triggs is in Ottawa for a meeting of the Comprehensive Regional Protection and Solutions Framework Support Platform, a multicountry initiative that encourages greater responsibility sharing on forced displacement in Central America and Mexico. Canada is currently chairing the platform, with a focus on the needs of women and girl refugees and migrants.

Source: UN agency concerned about impact of Canada’s immigration backlog on refugees

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

The Silence of the Right on Ukrainian Refugees

2022/05/16 Leave a comment

Of note (not unique to USA as contrasting Canada’s previous firm policies in terms of access to work permits, healthcare and settlement services to Ukrainian temporary residents under the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel program compared to Afghans and others illustrates:

Last summer, anti-immigration advocates mobilized in opposition to the resettlement of tens of thousands of Afghan refugees in the United States. “It threatens the national security of the United States,” wroteStephen Miller, the former top Donald Trump adviser. Miller charged in another tweet that President Joe Biden had “cruelly betrayed his oath of office” by expediting the entry of Afghans fleeing the Taliban without, Miller said, proper vetting. A prominent immigration-restrictionist group issued a report warning of fraud and abuse in the nation’s refugee programs, and immigration hard-liners flooded conservative airwaves throughout the fall to denounce the administration’s plans.

Then came another refugee crisis, this time in Ukraine. In March, Biden said the U.S. would admit up to 100,000 of the millions of Ukrainians who had left their country after the Russian invasion. The announcement was sure to provoke the outrage of the nation’s most ardent immigration foes, whose cries about an influx of refugees from a war-stricken region had barely faded from the news.

Except it didn’t.

Anti-immigration advocates have been far quieter about the Biden administration’s policy toward Ukrainian refugees than they were about its stance toward Afghan refugees. What’s more, the criticism they have leveled has had almost nothing to do with concerns about vetting or national security. Miller, for example, tweeted dozens of dire warnings about Afghan refugees during the summer and fall of 2021. He has also tweeted frequently about Ukraine since the crisis escalated at the beginning of this year, but not a single time about Biden’s plan to accept 100,000 refugees. (Through a spokesperson, he declined an interview request.)

To the groups who resettle refugees in the U.S., the divergent responses from the political right are a stark but familiar example of the long-standing bias against immigrants from poor or predominantly Muslim countries in favor of those from Europe, who are predominantly white. Those attitudes are also reflected in—and might contribute to—public opinion about America’s refugee policy. In a poll conducted last month for The Atlantic by Leger, 58 percent of respondents supported the U.S. accepting refugees from Ukraine, while just 46 percent backed admitting those from Afghanistan. Asked whether the U.S. should admit more refugees from one country than the other, 23 percent of respondents said the U.S. should take more people from Ukraine, while just 4 percent said the U.S. should accept more from Afghanistan, despite America’s two-decade involvement in the war there. Gallup found even broader support for admitting Ukrainian refugees, the highest for any refugee group it has polled about since 1939.

“Americans get a certain amount of compassion fatigue for certain parts of the world that are chronically in turmoil, and no American alive today can ever remember a time of peace in the Middle East,” Dan Stein, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that seeks a reduction in overall immigration to the U.S., told me. “It’s also true that Ukraine has not been viewed routinely as a source of refugees, of political conflict, at least not in the modern world.”

Senior officials with refugee-resettlement groups told me that they haven’t put much stock into the reaction of immigration hard-liners, because Republican governors and leaders in Congress have remained broadly supportive of accepting Afghan refugees. But they have sharply criticized the Biden administration for what they say is unequal treatment of refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine. “It certainly appears that Ukrainians are receiving special treatment,” Adam Bates, a policy counsel for the International Refugee Assistance Project, told me.

Under its Uniting With Ukraine program, the Biden administration is waiving all fees associated with applying for humanitarian parole. By contrast, IRAP says, the U.S. government charged more than 40,000 applicants from Afghanistan as much as $575 to seek similar protection last summer. The government is also scrapping requirements that Ukrainians submit evidence that they were specifically targeted by the Russian military or President Vladimir Putin, whereas Afghan applicants must provide proof of individualized, targeted violence against them by the Taliban.

The White House declined to comment. The administration has touted its evacuation of more than 82,000 Afghans to the U.S., including many allies who helped the U.S. military during its 20-year war. In both crises, the government has sought to route many applicants around the official refugee and special-immigrant visa programs because they are so backlogged. Officials have said that the humanitarian parole that the U.S. is offering to Ukrainians lasts for only two years, which Bates took as a suggestion that the government assumes many refugees will want to stay in the country only temporarily. I asked him what he thought was the real reason the Biden administration was expediting the process for Ukrainians in ways it did not for Afghans. “This is just speculating,” he cautioned in his reply. “But to me, I do not think that the influence of systemic racism and xenophobia in this country has been limited to just one party in the context of immigration.”

The politics of immigration have bedeviled Biden from his first days in office. Republicans have accused him of countenancing a veritable invasion of the southern border by migrants and asylum seekers, while progressives criticized his decision to keep in place some Trump-administration policies reviled by immigrant advocates. Biden’s critics on the right say his lax handling of the southern border has left the country stretched too thin to respond effectively to the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine. “The problem is that resettling refugees takes work and money and infrastructure, which has been overwhelmed by all the illegal aliens who were using asylum as a gambit to get past the Border Patrol,” Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, told me.

Many others, however, say the U.S. has both the moral obligation and the capacity to open its doors to those fleeing war and persecution.

Conservatives who have raised alarms about resettling Afghan refugees say the need to vet them is stronger because the American invasion created enemies who could try to sneak into the U.S. to exact revenge. They’ve also warned about the cultural differences between Afghanistan and the U.S., highlighting reports of child trafficking by male evacuees who claim young girls as their brides.

Krikorian has assailed the nation’s refugee policy across the board and told me the U.S. could do more good simply by sending money overseas to help resettle evacuees in countries closer to their homeland. But he had harsher words for the Biden administration’s pledge to admit refugees from Ukraine. “We clearly have more obligation to Afghans than we do to Ukrainians,” Krikorian said. At the same time, he said, individual Afghan refugees presented bigger security and cultural concerns than did Ukrainians. As an example, Krikorian referenced reports of widespread sexual abuse of young boys by members of the Afghan security forces made by members of the U.S. military during the war. “I wouldn’t say because of that, we don’t take Afghans, but we do take Ukrainians,” he said. “But in individual cases, in doing vetting and assessing whether it’s a good idea to bring somebody into the United States, we definitely should take that into consideration.”

Those reports and the stereotypes they feed may help explain why the public voices stronger support for refugees from Ukraine than from Afghanistan, and, on some level, why the government has treated them differently. But to those who work on behalf of refugees, they are beside the point. “Of course, we need to vet immigrants who are coming into the U.S. to make sure that they are not a threat to the American public. But we need to do that consistently,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, told me. “Both populations have strong rationales for seeking refuge here in the U.S. We shouldn’t pit one population against the other.”

Source: The Silence of the Right on Ukrainian Refugees

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →