25,000 Syrian refugees in four months: How did Canada do it?

2016/03/11 Leave a comment

Rob Vineberg’s good summary of the mechanics of the Syrian refugee intake, in The Interpreter of Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy.

His conclusion is noteworthy:

How did Canada manage to meet such an ambitious goal? Ironically, it was the ambitious goal itself that galvanised the Public Service and the Armed Forces to develop innovative approaches. A smaller goal would have resulted in ‘more of the same’ and disappointing results. As Minister McCallum said: ‘One definition of real change is you’re doing something you’ve never done before.’

Source: 25,000 Syrian refugees in four months: How did Canada do it?

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Nine new MPs came to Canada as refugees or from current or past war zones |

2016/03/08 Leave a comment

Good profile of the backgrounds of this group of MPs:

Nine newly-elected MPs in the 42nd Parliament, which is considered the most diverse crop of MPs in Parliament’s history, came to Canada either as refugees or fled from war-torn countries.

Out of the nine, according to research conducted by John Chenier, former editor of <em>The Lobby Monitor</em> and now editor of ARC Publications, four came to Canada as refugees from war zones or suffered persecution and five immigrated to Canada from current and past troubled zones such as the Middle East or Pakistan.

The four MPs who came to Canada as refugees are: Liberals Arif Virani (Parkdale-High Park, Ont.) from Uganda; Gary Anandasangaree (Scarborough-Rouge Park, Ont.) from Sri Lanka; Maryam Monsef (Peterborough-Kawartha, Ont.) from Afghanistan and Ahmed Hussen (York South-Weston, Ont.) from Somalia.

The five first-generation immigrants from current and past danger zones include: Liberal MP Faycal El-Khoury (Laval-Les Iles, Que.) from Lebanon; Liberal MP Iqra Khalid (Mississauga-Erin Mills, Ont.) from Pakistan; Liberal MP Salma Zahid (Scarborough Centre, Ont.) from Pakistan; Liberal MP Eva Nassif (Vimy, Que.) from Lebanon, and Conservative MP Ziad Aboultaif (Edmonton Manning, Alta.) from Lebanon.

In total, there are 40 MPs from all parties who were born outside of Canada, according to Parliament of Canada website and research conducted by <em>The Hill Times</em>. Of these, 29 are Liberal, eight are Conservatives, two are NDP, and one from the Green Party.

Source: Nine new MPs came to Canada as refugees or from current or past war zones |

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Merkel’s approach to the migrant crisis is a battle for Germany’s soul

2016/03/02 Leave a comment

Alan Freeman on Germany and refugees:

Yet while Chancellor Merkel is keenly aware that the flow must slow down and is enacting measures to screen out non-Syrian and non-Iraqi migrants, she continues to insist that Germany cannot and should not follow its neighbours and simply shut its borders. In a weekend TV interview, she dismissed the idea of a rigid limit on the number of new migrants. “There is no point in believing that I can solve the problem through the unilateral closure of borders.”“I have no Plan B,” Merkel said bravely, although she added that Germany will continue to work on solving the problem at its root, in the Syrian conflict, and will try to get her EU colleagues to accept some redistribution of the migrants. Aside from Sweden, nobody else has stepped to the plate in the same way as Germany.

Why is Merkel doing this? Her reasons actually have as much to do with Germany’s past and future as they do with its present.

When I lived in Berlin in the late 1990s, I was struck by the burden of history that ordinary Germans bear. The Nazi past is around every street corner, with museums, memorials and plaques recalling the horror of those dozen years. Added to this unfortunate heritage was the weight of four decades of totalitarian rule in the old German Democratic Republic. Can a nation have too much history?

Aware of how their forebears were the source of so much displacement, hatred and death in the Second World War, contemporary Germans like Merkel have vowed they will never again close their doors to those in need. They also see their national identity as being as part of something bigger — which explains in large part why they continue to be the major backers of the European ideal.

“If Germany can’t show a friendly face in an emergency situation, then it’s not my country,” Merkel has said.

She picked up the same line in her weekend interview. “There is so much violence and hardship on our doorstep,” she said. “What is right for Germany in the long term? I think it is to keep Europe together and to show humanity.”

There’s also a practical, down-to-earth reason for opening Germany’s doors to migrants. Germany’s population is stagnating and on the verge of major decline, as the birth rate continues to fall and the proportion of the elderly rises. Over the next 15 years, it could mean a loss of 6 million of the workers needed to power the German economy. If nothing is done, the population will drop to 67 million by 2060.

Japan, facing a similar demographic crisis, already has seen its population fall by 1 million over the past five years to 127 million. Japan is on track to losing 40 per cent of its population by the end of the century. But Japan won’t even consider mass immigration as an alternative, dooming itself to increasing irrelevance.

The idea of a shrinking Germany is obviously anathema to Chancellor Merkel. So she is willing to take the risk of opening up the country to masses of migrants, hopeful that they can be successfully integrated into a strong economy and become Germans. It’s a huge gamble.

Germans may not be yet convinced — but neither are they rejecting her vision of the future either. A poll conducted for Focus magazine at the end of January showed that 39.9 per cent of those surveyed believed Merkel should resign because of her handling of the refugee crisis. But a surprisingly strong plurality of 45.2 per cent said she should stay on.

And her Christian Democratic Party still leads handily against its rivals. It would be foolish to count Merkel out.

http://ipolitics.ca/2016/02/29/merkels-approach-to-the-migrant-crisis-is-a-battle-to-save-germanys-soul/&nbsp;

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Is Ottawa treating all refugees fairly?

2016/03/01 Leave a comment

The pressures are almost infinite, and the question of how many, and how to select becomes harder and harder.

We will see what the Government proposes in terms of overall immigration levels and for the different classes when it tables its immigration plan expected March 9:

Close to 59.5 million people worldwide are currently displaced by war and conflict, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Some would like to make their way to Canada and have family and sponsors here eager to help out. But it’s not that easy.

The problem for Teclehaimanot and others who would like to sponsor refugees who aren’t from Syria stems from a number of changes in immigration department procedures. A cap imposed on Canadian visa offices in Nairobi, Cairo, Pretoria, Dar es Salaam and Islamabad by Ottawa in 2011 has limited the number of refugees who can come to Canada, said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

Similarly, she said, a cap on sponsorship agreement holders and the number of refugees they can sponsor also limits the flow of refugees to Canada.

Those restrictions, coupled with a backlog of 27,959 privately sponsored refugees, deep financial cuts to the department instituted by the former Conservative government and long processing times of up to 70 months for refugees from some countries, have made it difficult for those from many other regions.

Immigration spokesperson Lariviere said it would be “inappropriate to comment” on the issue of caps — either on Canadian visa offices or for sponsorship agreement holders — before the 2016 Immigration Levels Plan has been tabled in the House of Commons. That announcement is expected in coming weeks.

Teclehaimanot’s experience isn’t unusual. Every month, Canadians who want to sponsor family or friends in other parts of the world are turned away or told they have to wait.

“We have people here waiting year after year,” said Azaria Wolday, manager of the private sponsorship program for Northwood Neighbourhood Community Services. “We have at least 300 families in our books. We are not putting any more people on our waiting list.”

Last year, as many as 800 people approached Northwood about sponsoring Ethiopian, Eritrean, Sudanese and Afghan refugees. Wolday had to say no to most.

With that in mind he believes the federal government should take the lessons learned from dealing with Syrian refugees and apply them to other groups. “It is a matter of political will,” he said.

Similarly, at the refugee office for the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, organizers have turned away requests for sponsorship of refugees from Africa since September. There simply is no room to bring them in.

“Until 2011 we didn’t have any caps. In one year we backed 700 sponsorships. Next year we only did 200 because of the allocation given to us,” said Dr. Martin Mark, director of the Office for Refugees at the Archdiocese of Toronto.

“When we talk about refugees, half of the world’s refugee population in need of resettlement is in Africa,” said Mark. “We should have a significant number of spots for sub-Saharan Africans.”

To show the inequity, Mark says his organization was allowed 200 refugee spots through the Canadian visa office in Nairobi — but that covered refugee applications from not just Kenya but several other African countries.

He says his office has 200 African refugee submissions ready to go if spots become available. In contrast, he has unlimited spots for Syrians thanks to the government’s Syrian refugee program, he said.

He also believes processing of other refugee applications is slowing down because officers are concentrating on Syrian refugees.

It’s all tantamount to a kind of refugee roulette, with the winners coming from places like Syria and others being ignored or placed on a very long waiting list, said Teclehaimanot. “All applicants, all sponsors are complaining about the backlog,” he said. “The government knows there is a backlog. They need to spend money. They need to invest.”

Source: Is Ottawa treating all refugees fairly? | Toronto Star

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Business groups fear refugees and immigrant families will crowd out spaces for foreign workers in Canada

2016/02/23 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see how the Government balances the different demands and whether or not it raises the overall number of immigrants (levels, currently around 250,000).

And it is not only refugees that are creating pressures on levels, as seen in Minister McCallum’s mandate letter:

  • As part of the Annual Immigration Levels Plan for 2016, bring forward a proposal to double the number of entry applications for parents and grandparents of immigrants to 10,000 a year.
  • Give additional points under the Entry Express system to provide more opportunities for applicants who have Canadian siblings.
  • Increase the maximum age for dependents to 22, from 19, to allow more Canadians to bring their children to Canada.
  • Bring forward a proposal regarding permanent residency for new spouses entering Canada.

Should know the results of these trade-offs March 9:

Provinces and businesses keen to bolster their workforce are worried the push for Syrian refugees this year will lead to a cutback in foreign workers..

The government admits a set number of immigrants each year. In 2015, for example, the Conservative government planned to admit up to 285,000 immigrants. Of those slots, 66 per cent were reserved for economic immigrants; 24 per cent of the slots were for the family members of immigrants; and the remaining 10 per cent were for refugees and other humanitarian entrants.

The federal government is supposed to provide its immigration admission numbers by Oct. 31 each year. Because of last fall’s federal election, the numbers for 2016 haven’t yet been published. The government now has until March 9 to come up with its plan.

But with tens of thousands more refugees being admitted this year compared to 2015, and with the Liberals’ campaign promise to make it easier for immigrants to reunite with their parents and grandparents, the number of slots reserved for economic immigrants may be reduced.

(Economic immigrants are foreign workers, including business people and skilled tradespeople, who are allowed into Canada on a permanent basis. Those admitted through the controversial temporary foreign worker program fall into a different category.)

Immigration Minister John McCallum said last week he has consulted with industry, as well as refugee groups and other organizations about this year’s immigration levels. But he wouldn’t say whether the government is considering reducing the number of economic immigrants allowed.

Critics often accused the Conservatives of turning Canada’s immigration system into little more than a hiring program, with refugees and families being given short shrift. In 2007, foreign workers represented only 60 per cent of immigration admission targets. with 26 per cent family members and 14 per cent refugees.

Given the state of the Canadian economy, with unemployment rising, some question whether the government should continue to admit tens of thousands of foreign workers, including business people and skilled tradesmen, on a permanent basis.

But provinces, industry associations and experts say economic immigrants are essential for meeting Canada’s labour needs. Some bring skills that are in short supply in Canada, while others are willing to do jobs Canadians won’t. The country’s low birthrate also threatens long-term labour force supply.

“We really need immigrants to drive economic growth,” said Sarah Anson-Carter, director of skills and immigration policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. “Economic immigrants make up about 30 per cent of new entrants into the labour force each year.”

Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said economic immigrants are even more important now given that the temporary foreign worker program has been effectively frozen while the Liberals review it.

“The small business community does not want to see economic immigration drop in this country,” he said. “TFW has been rendered largely useless for small businesses.”

Provinces are also counting on the government to keep the levels where they are. One provincial official, speaking on background, said provinces loudly protested when federal immigration officials recently suggested that the number of economic immigrants could be scaled back this year.

“Our hope is it would remain the same or have a modest increase,” the official said.

Source: Business groups fear refugees and immigrant families will crowd out spaces for foreign workers in Canada

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How Syrian refugees arriving in Canada became ‘extras’ in their own stories

2016/02/23 2 Comments

Academics! Miss the point that maintaining public support for refugees is equally important, and making Canadians feel good about themselves is part of that.

Media coverage that I follow has included a fair amount of stories about the refugees themselves and the challenges they face.

And Al-Solaylee, the academic quoted, does not base his critique on a rigorous, quantitative analysis of media coverage:

When he saw images of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne greeting some of the first Syrian refugees to arrive in Canada, Kamal Al-Solaylee was overcome with pride. After all, 20 years ago, he was the one arriving in Canada.

“My initial feelings were of euphoria and happiness. This is a great country, this is a very welcoming country,” says Al-Solaylee, a journalism professor at Ryerson University and the author of the 2015 Canada Reads finalist Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes.

But as he saw more and more news stories about sponsors hugging refugees in airports and Canadians knitting toques to keep refugees warm during their first Canadian winter, he began to feel uncomfortable.

“The story is changing. It’s no longer about them, it’s about us as Canadians,” Al-Solaylee says. “The gaze turned inward instead of outward.”

He points to CBC’s “Open Arms” project, which highlights the “outpouring of Canadian generosity and support” towards refugees, as an example of how the conversation has shifted to place the focus on Canadians.

Al-Solaylee says he understands why stories about acts of kindness and refugees’ first visits to Tim Horton’s resonate with journalists and their audiences. However, he worries feel-good stories are “suck[ing] the oxygen” out of important stories about what life in Canada is really like for immigrants and refugees after the welcome is over.

“The truth is a lot of these immigrants will struggle, initially and probably for a long time. They will not be able to find jobs that call on their qualifications or experience. They will end up doing the kind of work that Canadians no longer want to do,” he says.

Source: How Syrian refugees arriving in Canada became ‘extras’ in their own stories – Home | The 180 with Jim Brown | CBC Radio

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Liberals restoring refugee health benefits cut by previous government

2016/02/19 Leave a comment

Fully expected: in the Liberal platform and Minister McCallum’s mandate letter. Another commitment met, another Conservative policy undone:

The Liberal government has restored refugee health-care benefits cut by the previous Conservative government.

Speaking at a joint announcement Thursday, Immigration Minister John McCallum and Health Minister Jane Philpott said the Interim Federal Health Program, which provides health-care coverage for asylum claimants and refugees, will be fully restored to pre-2012 levels.

“All refugee claimants and refugees will now be covered,” Mr. McCallum told reporters in Ottawa. “The system had disintegrated into something of such enormous complexity that it was virtually unmanageable.”

The Conservative government scaled back refugee health-care benefits in 2012, arguing that the cuts would deter “bogus” refugees from coming to Canada and save taxpayers money. The Federal Court eventually found that the changes were unconstitutional and ordered the government to reinstate the benefits, leading the Conservatives to restore some. The Tory government launched an appeal of the court’s decision, which the Liberals eventually dropped.

Before 2012, refugee claimants had their health-care costs covered by the federal government until their application for status was decided or they became eligible for provincial health-care coverage.

The health-care benefits will be fully restored as of April 1, according to Mr. McCallum. The coverage will include hospital and physician services, while coverage for supplemental services, such as vision, urgent dental care and prescription drugs, will be similar to what provinces and territories provide to Canadians on social assistance.

Dr. Philpott said the return to the pre-2012 program will “simplify everything.”

“There will be one path. Refugees, … whatever category they will fall into, they will be eligible for the basic levels of care in addition to some supplementary levels of care. And this will help refugees, it will help health-care providers and it will help Canadians,” she said.

The government’s announcement comes months after it committed to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, who were already receiving health-care coverage. An exemption in the 2012 law ensures that refugees being settled as a “result of a public policy or humanitarian and compassionate considerations on the minister’s own initiative” receive full access to health-care benefits.

The government also announced an expansion of the program to cover certain services for refugees who have been identified for resettlement before they come to Canada. Starting April 1, 2017, those services will include coverage of the immigration medical examination, pre-departure vaccinations, services to manage disease outbreaks in refugee camps and medical support during travel to Canada.

Source: Liberals restoring refugee health benefits cut by previous government – The Globe and Mail

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‘Can I get a tax receipt?’: Tax confusion muddles Syrian refugee sponsorship efforts

2016/02/17 Leave a comment

Interesting wrinkle and will be interesting to see how it is resolved:

As the Toronto office of Lifeline Syria scrambles to accommodate thousands of refugees, the question the charity’s chair Ratna Omidvar and her team hears most often is: “Can I get a tax receipt?”

In many cases, the answer is no.

Canada has so far welcomed more than 13,500 refugees since the Liberal government’s program began last November. Of that total, close to 5,000 have been supported by private sponsors.

Refugee support initiatives such as Lifeline Syria say allowing donors to receive a tax receipt when they are donating to a registered charity and suggesting a particular family to receive support would encourage more donations, ease the government’s burden and make integration easier. Currently, charities can issue tax receipts to donors who indicate they’d like their donation applied to a specific area of interest, such as refugees, but not when the donation is directed to a particular family.

“The more Canadians step up and promote charities, the less the government is going to have to do these things,” says Estelle Duez, a tax lawyer at LaBarge Weinstein in Ottawa.

“As Canadians, we are used to the notion that when we make a charitable donation, (we) will get some kind of tax relief,” says Paul Clarke, executive director of Action Réfugiés Montréal. He says despite the extraordinary support Canadians have shown for Syrian refugees to date, questions around tax deductibility dissuade some people from sponsorship.

Mark Blumberg, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in non-profit and charity law, says the Canada Revenue Agency could make donating and sponsoring easier by clarifying the rules. Although money given to a registered refugee charity is normally tax deductible, Blumberg says the situation becomes more tricky when a donor instructs the money should go to a specific person or family, sometimes referred to as a “general direction” or “directed gift.”

The CRA’s position is that “All decisions regarding use of the donation must rest with the charity.” In other words: it cannot issue a tax receipt if a donor wants the charity to give the funds to a specified person or family, because “such a gift is made to the person or family and not to the charity.”

Exceptions add to the confusion. For example, a “general direction” to use the gift for a “particular program” is acceptable, provided “no benefit accrues to the donor” and the gift “does not benefit any person not dealing at arms’ length with the donor.”

If the CRA provided greater leeway, “there’d be more people making donations,” says Blumberg. He cites the partial receipting of tuition costs at religious day schools.

Source: ‘Can I get a tax receipt?’: Tax confusion muddles Syrian refugee sponsorship efforts

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ICYMI – 2016: A Record-Setting Year for Refugee Resettlement in Canada?

2016/02/12 Leave a comment

Good background brief on refugee acceptance patterns and history by the Conference Board’s Kareem El-Assal, in preparation for their April Immigration Summit:

Should Canada meet its Syrian refugee pledge, we can expect to see several interesting developments in 2016. Canada’s combined intake of refugees across all categories and source countries will likely exceed 30,000 for the first time since 2006, and could surpass 40,000 for the first time since 1992, which would mark only the fifth such occasion since 1979. Canada’s intake of resettled refugees in 2016 is set to exceed 20,000 for the first time since 1992.

Another noteworthy statistic: should Canada meet its pledged amount of 23,000 Syrian GARs in 2016, it will result in the largest number of refugees arriving to Canada through government assistance in a calendar year since 1957, when Canada helped land over 32,000 Hungarian refugees.

While the number of Syrians arriving will likely fall short of the number of boat people resettled between 1975 and 1980, the total of Syrian refugees admitted into Canada by December 2016 could well surpass the Hungarian arrivals in 1956–57 as Canada’s second-largest post-Second World War resettlement effort ever, underscoring the historical magnitude of Canada’s Syrian refugee commitment.

On April 4–5, 2016, in Ottawa, we will be discussing refugee settlement and integration, and other pressing immigration issues, at The Conference Board of Canada’s 2016 Immigration Summit.

The Summit will engage participants in thought-provoking dialogue, and share national and international best-practice solutions to the challenges we face in improving our immigration system. Click here to become involved.

Source: 2016: A Record-Setting Year for Refugee Resettlement in Canada?

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ICYMI: ‘We did not come to be a burden.’ Belgian artists mail letters from migrants to an uncertain public | Toronto Star

2016/02/11 Leave a comment

Creative approach:

It’s not a letter home, but a letter of introduction to a new home.

Amid the increasingly xenophobic political rhetoric in Europe, a pair of Belgian artists is sending letters written by recently arrived migrants to local residents.

“Moving Stories” is a public art project that seeks to break down the invisible barriers between the migrants and those who have, somewhat reluctantly, welcomed them into safety.

“We wanted to invite people to get in touch with each other and talk to each other instead of about each other,” said the artists’ agent, Anouk Focquier. “That’s what’s missing in this entire debate.”

Dirk Schellekens and Bart Peleman got 13 migrants living in a Red Cross shelter in Antwerp to pen letters explaining why they left their homes in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and how they arrived in Belgium. The letters were then translated from the migrants’ mother tongues into Flemish and copied 166 times — one for each of the nationalities present in the city.

On Friday, the missives and their translations were put into envelopes and posted to random addresses across the Antwerp, along with return postcards inviting the recipients to send back a response.

The messages, written in Arabic, Kurdish, French, Russian and English, describe persecution at the hands of Al Shebab in Somalia, domestic abuse in northern Mali and forced conscription in Syria — not to mention hardships endured on the journey to Europe.

Focquier said the artists asked the migrants to use pen and paper in order to undermine the knee-jerk opinion forming that takes place on social media.

“When you write a letter, you sit down and think. And we wanted to slow down the process of forming opinions because that’s going really fast right now.”

Schellekens & Peleman, as the artists are collectively known, have focused their recent work on the European refugee crisis, floating a six-metre inflatable sculpture of a migrant on a small boat through Venice, Italy in November.

The “Inflatable Refugee” sculpture is made from the same materials as the boats that transport migrants across the Mediterranean Sea — “too fragile to withstand the waves,” the artists write.

“Do we see him as a human or as a problem? Is his presence an opportunity or a threat, devoid of human characteristics?”

Source: ‘We did not come to be a burden.’ Belgian artists mail letters from migrants to an uncertain public | Toronto Star

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