Yazidi genocide moves onto McCallum’s plate

2016/07/28 Leave a comment

To watch:

The whirlwind parliamentary study of the plight of Yazidis and other vulnerable groups has finished, and the witnesses and committee members are looking to Immigration Minister John McCallum to make the next move.

The emotional and often partisan study by the House Immigration Committee included calls from survivors of the Yazidi genocide, community advocates, and opposition MPs for the government to take special action to help persecuted Yazidis—a minority religious group targeted for genocide by ISIL (also known as ISIS, Daesh, and Islamic State)—in Iraq and the surrounding territories.

The Liberal-majority Immigration Committee asked Mr. McCallum (Markham-Thornhill, Ont.) to “accelerate” asylum applications by Yazidis fleeing the violence, and to “create and implement special measures to facilitate Canada’s response” in a letter sent through Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Ont.), the committee chair.

“We’re asking the government to use existing tools that are available in order to fulfill what the United Nations has called for” for the Yazidi population, said Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos (London North Centre, Ont.), who temporarily replaced Liberal MP Shaun Chen (Scarborough North, Ont.) on the committee during the study.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel (Calgary Nose Hill, Alta.), a committee member and her party’s immigration critic, sent her own letter to Mr. McCallum calling for the government to once again exempt Syrian and Iraqi refugees from an annual cap on privately-sponsored refugees coming into Canada, and to examine using a special section of the federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to bring asylum-seekers to Canada quicker.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), a committee member and her party’s immigration critic, sent her own letter to Mr. McCallum. Both Ms. Kwan and Ms. Rempel called on the minister to use that special provision in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, section 25, to immediately resettle vulnerable people to Canada, and to begin tracking refugees by ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation, so as to show how successful the government is at bringing in those under the greatest threat.

Mr. McCallum declined to be interviewed on the subject through spokesperson Félix Corriveau, who wrote in an emailed statement that “the minister’s schedule will not allow him to answer your questions.”

The committee will issue a formal report to the minister once Parliament resumes in the fall.

UN refugee agency, UN convention under fire

The Liberal government faces numerous obstacles to the type of quick, large-scale action urged by the committee members and advocates for persecuted minority groups in the Middle East, South Sudan, Myanmar, and elsewhere.

For one, it has already run up a significant bill during a deficit year for its ongoing admission and resettlement of 25,000 government-assisted Syrian refugees, and has committed nearly $1 billion to support those refugees over six years.

Mr. McCallum told Bloomberg last week that his government was having trouble bringing in refugees fast enough to meet the demand of Canadians who wish to privately sponsor their resettlement. However, there was concern among the leaders of some of Canada’s largest cities that they would not have the resources to deal with the large influx of Syrian refugees as the government hit the stride of its mass resettlement effort earlier this year.

The government faces a more technical barrier to the resettlement of Yazidis and other persecuted groups. Many of those people are living in camps or other places of temporary refuge within the borders of their home country. Under the wording of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, upon which Canadian law is based, those people are not considered to be refugees as they have not left their country.

Canada currently relies upon the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN’s refugee agency, to help it select refugees for resettlement, and that agency does not have the mandate to deal with internally displaced people, David Manicom, the associate assistant deputy minister for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, told the committee.

Canada and the international community should look at reopening the UN Refugee Convention to address that issue, said Mr. Fragiskatos.

However, Mr. Manicom said doing so would be too risky, as some signatories to the convention wish to narrow, not expand, their responsibility to refugees under that convention.

To bring in internally displaced people from hard-to-reach areas, the government may have to follow in the footsteps of Germany, which resettled more than a 1,000 persecuted Yazidis following the ISIL attack in 2014 by working with third-party humanitarian groups instead, Mr. Manicom said.

Government officials are planning a fact-finding mission to Erbil in northern Iraq for the fall, he said.

Source: The Hill Times

Filed under Refugees Tagged with ,

Do more to help Yazidis, say Tories as audit of 546 refugees shows they only let in 3

2016/07/20 Leave a comment

Hard to believe, given all the previous and current rhetoric of the Conservatives. Kind of undermines their case even though I am sympathetic to giving priority to communities at greater risk, including the Yazidis:

As the Conservatives push for more help for Yazidis fleeing persecution at the hands of Islamic militants, new information suggests their efforts to do so while in government were minimal.

Data from a controversial audit of Syrian refugee cases ordered by former prime minister Stephen Harper late last spring reveals of 546 people reviewed, three identified as Yazidi, a Kurdish minority group which practices an ancient faith.

Immigration officials also told a House of Commons committee Monday that Yazidis were never highlighted specifically by the Conservatives as a group that should be prioritized for resettlement, even with their targeted approach to resettlement.

The data and the testimony Monday give both the Liberal and the Conservative arguments over Canada’s refugee policy some new energy after the file was a political flashpoint for most of 2015.

The Conservatives’ areas-of-focus policy drew heavy criticism, with many arguing it flew in the face of international obligations that see the UN choose who is resettled. The Tories argued that they were using the UN criteria, but were drilling down within them to ensure the most vulnerable were helped.

The Tories put religious minorities in that category, but the data obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information laws suggest the vast majority of landed Syrians whose files were audited were Sunni Muslim, as is the refugee population at large. About three dozen were Christian.

That few Yazidis arrived under their watch is a fact the Tories haven’t dwelled on as they have been pushing the Liberals for more action.

UN ignores ethnicity when prioritizing refugees

Since 2014, the Yazidis have been subject to forced conversions, murder, rape and enslavement at the hands of Islamic militants — actions recently declared a genocide by the UN.

The Tories now say that declaration should put them at the front of the line for resettlement to Canada.

There are, however, numerous policy roadblocks, especially the fact that most are in their home country of Iraq and as such aren’t eligible for resettlement.

Another challenge is that while a person’s faith or ethnicity might be the reason he or she became a refugee, it’s not something the UN looks at when selecting people for resettlement. In fact, the UN expressly asks states not to prioritize groups that way because the most important criteria must be vulnerability.

The Liberals repeatedly asked Immigration Department officials Monday about the policies of the previous government. While in opposition, they had argued that selecting refugees on the basis of religion — as the Tories were believed to be doing — was wrong. The Liberals have resisted calls to do so with the Yazidis.

But the Tories never gave specific instructions to track Yazidis, the officials said.

What about the Tories’ “areas of focus,” the officials were asked. Were Yazidis placed on that?

“There was no specific group put on the list,” Robert Orr, assistant deputy minister, said.

Source: Do more to help Yazidis, say Tories as audit of 546 refugees shows they only let in 3 – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

Time to change refugee law, says immigration committee chair

2016/07/14 Leave a comment

To note:

Canada’s refugee system is failing persecuted peoples around the world who can’t flee their own country, say members of the House Immigration Committee.

The committee agreed unanimously to hold a series of meetings over the summer to study the protection of vulnerable groups, and much of the discussion will likely revolve around internally displaced persons (IDPs)—those who are persecuted and driven from their homes, but aren’t able to reach refugee camps outside of their country’s borders, and thus are not legal refugees.

“Everything [in Canada] is structured around refugees: the regulatory, the legal framework. And it doesn’t allow us to address the issue of IDPs,” said Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Ont.), the committee chair.

The committee hopes to have a report ready by September, complete with suggestions for legal, regulatory, or policy changes that could make it easier to bring vulnerable internally displaced people, including Iraqi Yazidis, to Canada, said Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, adding he hoped the report “could be used as a framework for our government to act on this humanitarian crisis.”

The committee was inspired to act after the United Nations released its report last month on the persecution of the Yazidi people in northern Iraq by ISIL (also known as ISIS, Daesh, and the Islamic State), say the committee chair and vice-chairs.

A pair of Yazidi women are among the witnesses scheduled to speak before the committee, as are representatives of the UN Human Rights Commission, office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and government officials. The committee also invited electronic submissions from the public up until July 13.

Source: The Hill Times

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

Welcome to the country: Refugees are helping a prairie town grow

2016/07/11 Leave a comment

Good long read by Erin Anderssen on the welcome and support given to Syrian and other refugees in Altona, Manitoba, a community originally settled by Mennonite refugees.

Source: Welcome to the country: Refugees are helping a prairie town grow – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

Arabic, English language exchange creates community connections

2016/07/05 Leave a comment

Good small initiative bringing people together:

“With the influx of Syrian refugees and the outpouring of public desire to help, I thought it was a right time to try and start a language exchange program focussing on Arabic and English. So I started networking.”

She got a $2,500 grant from UBC’s Global Responses to the Refugee Crisis for rental costs and language materials. She found a meeting space at the Ajyal Islamic Centre in downtown Vancouver. She put the word out for participants. Twenty women signed up for the course — 10 English-speaking Canadians and 10 Arabic speakers. The participants were then divided into pairs — one English speaker to one Arabic speaker — and were told they would be responsible for each other’s instruction. Over the course’s 10-week term, each session would be divided in half between English speakers helping the Arabic speakers learn English, and then the Arabic speakers helping the English speakers learn Arabic.

For the English speakers, who knew little or no Arabic, it was tough going. But what they did find instructive were the Arabic-speaking women themselves. They hailed from Eqypt, Kuwait, Libya, Iraq and Syria. They confounded stereotype. Several were professionals. Several were refugees. Hazar AlSibaai, a civil engineer, and her 16-year-old daughter, Sana AlAyoubi, were Syrians who had spent three years in a Jordanian refugee camp before coming to Canada. Michelle Kaczmarek, a Masters student in library and information studies at UBC, was partnered with Hazar, and Shalene Takara, a clinical counsellor, partnered Sana.

“I found them very friendly and incredibly joyous,” said Kaczmarek, “and the group very diverse as well. It was important to recognize that diversity in this massive Arabic-speaking world.”

“In every class we did,” Takara said, “we focussed on a theme. One of them, for example, was about food, and Hazar and I talked about what we cooked, where we shopped, where we came from … everyday things. It was quite playful and fun, and we joked a lot, and that part was unexpected for me. I think how much we shared beyond the language exchange came as a surprise.”

Hazar, whose English is halting, said she wanted to improve her English so she might go back to school and eventually find work as an engineer here. But that, she said, would be difficult. Sana, who took English in school in Syria, spoke much more fluently, and attends high school here now. (At one point, she brought in her physics homework so Kaczmarek could help her with it.) She took the class, she said, not only to improve her English but “to engage the community here.” She hopes to go on to university and become a pharmacologist.

But life here was very different from what she knew, she said. “It’s very difficult. I need time. It’s not just about the language; it’s everything that’s different.”

Not too much can be made of 10 weeks of language lessons, of course. A feel-good story is one thing, but it doesn’t make it any easier for Hazar to find work or Sana to pass her exams. It doesn’t guarantee what little Arabic they learned would stay with Kaczmarek or Takara, or that lasting relationships would blossom between any of the 20 women. It won’t stop wars, or doors from closing.

On the other hand, they were 20 women who, despite the cultural gulf, enjoyed each other’s company. And at the end of the last session, everyone stayed late after class, sat down to a meal and broke bread together.

Source: Arabic, English language exchange creates community connections | Vancouver Sun

Filed under Multiculturalism, Refugees Tagged with

Refugee system reform at risk as asylum numbers keep climbing: report

2016/06/29 Leave a comment

Like any such major changes, takes time to assess the results. Overall, a fairly positive evaluation is my take, with recommendations more in the nature of incremental improvements (Evaluation of the In-Canada Asylum System Reforms).

But there appears to be little explanation for the reasons of the increase, only discussion of the possible effects of the increase:

Changes made to Canada’s refugee system in 2012 resulted in faster decisions on asylum claims, but an internal government study warns those improvements may now be at risk.

Several asylum targets weren’t met following the implementation of reforms, despite the fact the government had set aside money to cover twice as many claims as were ultimately received, the study found.

Now, the number of claims is on the rise again.

“If claim intake continues to increase, there is a risk that there may be further challenges meeting targets, that backlogs may grow, and the overall average claimant time in the system may increase,” said an internal evaluation of the reforms posted online by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

The latest evaluation comes with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government poised to put additional pressure on the system by undoing another of the changes made by the previous Conservative government.

The primary goal of the changes had been to get claims decided faster, to ensure those in need of asylum were approved more quickly, and those who did not qualify were promptly deported.

The evaluation examined the implementation of two laws that — among other things — created timelines for certain steps in the process and limited avenues of appeal for claimants from certain countries.

Prior to that, however, the Tories also sought to cut off claims at the source by imposing visa restrictions on countries whose nationals were to blame much of the backlog.

One of those countries was Mexico: about 9,000 of 36,759 claims lodged in 2008 came from Mexicans. After visas were imposed in 2009, the number of Mexican claims fell to 1,199.

But this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and announce a plan to lift that visa requirement.

It will come despite objections from departmental officials who fear a new spike in claims and a precedent being set with regards to visas in place on other countries.

The evaluation doesn’t explicitly address the implications of a Mexican visa lift on the system. It was carried out prior to the Liberals winning the election.

But in general, it found, claims are already rising.

The year the reforms were introduced, 20,456 claims were lodged. In 2013, it was only 10,322. In 2014, 13,410 claims were filed, in 2015 over 16,000 and further increases are forecast in the next two years, the evaluation said.

The $259 million spent on the reform project means those seeking asylum now receive a decision on their file about five times faster than those who applied prior to 2012.

Despite that, targets for hearing dates and removals continue to be missed. Among them — the goal of getting 80 per cent of failed claimants out within 12 months of the decision. Just over half were actually removed.

In a formal response to the evaluation, both Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency said they were working to plug the gaps.

“Successful delivery of a decentralized asylum system requires close co-operation between independent organizations, while remaining mindful that each organization is independent in delivering on specific decision-making targets,” the government wrote in its response.

“Despite efforts to ensure the smooth management of the asylum system, there are factors that are beyond the control of IRCC and other organizations, such as unpredictable intake and challenges in obtaining travel documents from recalcitrant countries.”

Source: Refugee system reform at risk as asylum numbers keep climbing: report – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Refugees Tagged with ,

ICYMI: How my book on immigration became the voice of Germany at the Venice Biennale

2016/06/14 Leave a comment

Good account by Doug Saunders on how art based upon his book Arrival City helps communicate the issues and challenges:

This put us at the centre of Europe’s most urgent and politically challenging crisis. In an architecture biennale that is often given over to the most abstruse and ephemeral of ideas and visions, we had been asked to create the least abstract pavilion of them all.

After all, the 2016 Biennale’s theme, selected by the acclaimed architect Alejandro Aravena, is “Reporting from the Front”: He wanted exhibitions to focus on the architecture of “the margins,” not the pricey mega-structures that tend to dominate architecture fairs.

The stuff in this pavilion is really happening. And there is real money on the table. Germany is in the midst of an enormously controversial and difficult process of settling around a million refugees who’ve fled the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere – almost half the refugees arriving in Europe – and housing them in dozens of cities.

For the many thousands of people who have passed through our pavilion during the past two weeks, it has been a break from capital-A architecture and a swift plunge into the most turbulent debate in Europe’s modern history. ( Kirsten Bucher)

This has resulted in Berlin’s federal administration spending unprecedented sums on new buildings for this process: Shortly after the committee she sits on chose our “arrival city” exhibition in January, Ms. Hendricks announced that her government will fund the construction of 300,000 to 400,000 new units of social housing each year (for both refugees and established Germans), year after year, for the foreseeable future.

No other government in the Western world is spending this kind of money on housing – and it has been decades since any government has deployed architectural solutions to social problems on this scale. When finished, it will be the equivalent of having created a second Berlin, largely with public funds.

So Europe’s largest demographic and social crisis has suddenly become an architectural and urban-planning crisis: There is an urgent need to learn from the best lessons of the past seven decades of public-housing construction – and, more importantly, to avoid the many design failures of that period, the horrid “projects” and council flats and plattenbau districts, some of which led directly to impoverished and isolated immigrant districts prone to crime and extremism.

A core component of our pavilion is a database, available online, which documents more than 400 refugee-housing projects currently under way in Germany (many are intended to be turned into social or student housing once the refugee emergency abates). Some of them are awful. Some are ingenious. After standing in a room surrounded by these examples, the notion that architectural design has large-scale social consequences becomes far less abstract: These designs, for better or worse, will affect the lives and outcomes of families, communities and cities for generations.

Open to the elements and the passing crowds, the pavilion becomes an informal, improvised place, a teeming marketplace not just of ideas but of real-life things(Kirsten Bucher)

Other rooms, and the pavilion’s main chamber, are devoted to the “eight theses of the arrival city” we developed in a series of meetings in Frankfurt. These, distilled from my research conclusions, are emblazoned on the walls and illustrated with case studies of districts and projects in European cities:

The arrival city is a city within a city. The arrival city is a network of immigrants. The arrival city is affordable. The arrival city is close to business. The arrival city is informal. The arrival city is self-built. The arrival city is on the ground floor. The arrival city needs the best schools.

For the many thousands of people who have passed through our pavilion during the past two weeks, it has been a break from capital-A architecture and a swift plunge into the most turbulent debate in Europe’s modern history. Some, like Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, have lingered to take notes. Some have started arguments, sketched designs or told us they suddenly see their city’s kebab-shop district very differently. Others have just hung out, had a bite and soaked up the simultaneous sense of comfort and unfamiliarity – in the process, experiencing a small version of the sort of place we’re chronicling here.

Source: How my book on immigration became the voice of Germany at the Venice Biennale – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Not enough resources for Syrian refugees in Canada: poll

2016/05/10 Leave a comment

Encouraging high level of overall support despite funding concerns:

Canadians generally support the Liberal government’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis, but many think there are not enough resources in communities to support their resettlement, according to a new Nanos Research/Globe and Mail poll.

The poll of 1,000 Canadians found that 68 per cent support or somewhat support the government’s overall response to the Syrian refugee crisis, while 30 per cent oppose or somewhat oppose it. The government has resettled nearly 27,000 Syrian refugees since December of last year, with plans of welcoming thousands more throughout 2016.

“Canadians have given the Trudeau government a green light on this Syrian refugee crisis,” said pollster Nik Nanos. “The one thing that they are concerned about is whether we have the necessary resources to resettle these refugees in our communities.”

When asked if communities have all of the resources they need, such as housing, language training or social services, to resettle Syrian refugees, 61 per cent of Canadians disagreed or somewhat disagreed. On the other hand, 33 per cent agreed or somewhat agreed.

Chris Friesen, settlement services director of the Immigrant Services Society of B.C., said he was not surprised by Canadians’ concerns about the lack of settlement resources at the local level.

“Here in British Columbia for example, we’ve had over the past two years a 15-per-cent cut in the immigrant settlement and language program funding,” said Mr. Friesen. “The types of programs and supports we are seeing that are in short supply range from settlement-informed trauma support programs, a diversity of language programs, [and] additional children and youth programming.”

Mr. Friesen said there is a particular need for youth support, as close to 60 per cent of recently arrived Syrian refugees are under the age of 18. He said many Syrians also have medical issues – physical and mental, including post-traumatic stress disorder – stemming from their experiences during the conflict that require support.

Previous housing problems appear to be nearly solved. For instance, Mr. Friesen said his organization knows of about only six or seven Syrian refugee families still in hotels. During the height of the government’s efforts to resettle 25,000 Syrians before the end of February, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver asked the government to stop sending more refugees there for a few days as they struggled to house the large number of people who had already arrived. As of this week, 97 per cent of government-assisted Syrian refugees had moved into permanent housing, according to a government official.

The official said refugees are using the government services available to them. For instance, language assessments have been done for close to 80 per cent of Syrian resettlement clients over the age of 18, and 34 per cent of those assessed have begun language training.

Settlement funding will be increasing for all jurisdictions this year, the official also said. In addition to a base settlement fund of $588.6-million this fiscal year (outside of Quebec), the federal government has provided $38.6-million as a supplement to help deal with the arrival of the Syrian refugees and will kick in another $19.3-million through the budget, for a total of $646.5-million.

Source: Not enough resources for Syrian refugees in Canada: poll – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , , ,

John McCallum promises probe into immigration consultants’ fees for Syrian refugees

2016/04/21 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, there are always those who will seek to profit from these situations:

Immigration Minister John McCallum says he has ordered a three-part investigation into the practice of immigration consultants charging Syrian refugees thousands of dollars to process applications and possibly violating federal rules on private sponsorship by asking them to pay resettlement costs that should be paid by their sponsors.

“We are very concerned about this, and we want to explore all avenues as to possible wrongdoing,” McCallum told Rosemarie Barton on CBC’s Power & Politics Tuesday.

The minister was responding to a CBC News investigation that found that some immigration consultants are charging Syrians who want to come to Canada under the private sponsorship program between $3,000 to $6,400 per person to process their applications.

The investigation also found that some consultants are asking refugees to pay the cost of their resettlement in Canada up front before even arriving in the country. Under federal rules, these costs are supposed to be covered by private sponsors, not refugees, for a full year. Refugees can contribute to their settlement costs once they arrive in Canada but cannot be made to prepay or repay them, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

McCallum said he has asked for investigations on three fronts:

  • Law-enforcement agencies will determine whether any laws have been broken.
  • The Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC), which oversees immigration consultants in Canada, will determine whether any of its rules have been broken.
  • Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada will determine whether any sponsorship agreement holders have violated federal rules. If they did, those agreements could be nullified.

“I do think it’s a serious allegation. Given how generous the vast majority of Canadians have been, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth,” McCallum said. “With this three-front investigation, we should get some answers.”

McCallum said the investigation will also look into why immigration consultants are getting involved in the refugee sponsorship process at all.

“I don’t see why they’re there,” he said.

Source: John McCallum promises probe into immigration consultants’ fees for Syrian refugees – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

RCMP refugee screening a $16M flop, says internal report

2016/04/18 Leave a comment

Must be some lessons learned from a big data perspective, both for the RCMP as well as the government as a whole:

$16-million RCMP project to help keep dangerous refugees out of Canada has turned out to be an expensive security flop.

An internal evaluation says the screening project delivered information too late, strayed beyond its mandate, and in the end did almost nothing to catch refugees who might be linked to criminal or terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, 30 Mounties were tied up for four years on duties that did little to enhance Canada’s security.

FedElxn Conservatives 20150909

Then prime minister Stephen Harper said in Welland, Ont., on Sept. 9, 2015, that Canada needed to proceed cautiously in taking in refugees from war zones because they had to be properly screened for criminal and terrorism links. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

“The current approach does not appear to provide much by way of relevant information to support the admissibility screening of refugee claimants,” concludes the Sept. 29, 2015, report, obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act.

The report on the anemic results was completed at about the same time as then prime minister Stephen Harper said Canada had to proceed cautiously in accepting Syrian refugees so that Canada’s screening process could weed out terrorists.

“When we are dealing with people that are from, in many cases, a terrorist war zone, we are going to make sure that we screen people appropriately and the security of this country is fully protected,” Harper told a 2015 election rally in Welland, Ont.

“We cannot open the floodgates and airlift tens of thousands of refugees out of a terrorist war zone without proper process. That is too great a risk for Canada.”

Domestic databases checked

The RCMP screening pilot was launched in 2011-12 as part of a package of Conservative reforms tightening up the processing of refugees, including a controversial move to withdraw some medical treatments for rejected asylum seekers. The Liberals have since reversed that measure.

Under the pilot project, the RCMP vetted potential refugees already in Canada — the names were provided by the Canada Border Services Agency — by checking domestic police databases for links to criminal or terrorist organizations, among other things.

Source: RCMP refugee screening a $16M flop, says internal report – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Refugees, Security Tagged with

← Older posts

Newer posts →