Ottawa will seek to settle more Syrians in French communities, says McCallum, Overall settlement challenges

2016/01/20 Leave a comment

Challenge has shifted to bring refugees here to settling them:

Immigration Minister John McCallum says the federal government is looking to settle newly arrived Syrian refugees in more French-speaking communities across the country.

McCallum says more than 90 per cent of refugees that have arrived in Canada speak neither English or French.

That creates what he calls a blank slate for refugees and provinces to teach newly arrived Syrians either of Canada’s two official languages.

McCallum says where refugees end up living will depend on which communities have the resources to resettle the 10,000 that have arrived since November — and 15,000 more that are scheduled to arrive by the end of February.

The Liberals promised during the election campaign to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015.

Once in office, they changed that goal, citing the realities of moving all those people in a short period of time, including inclement weather that didn’t always make flights possible.

The last of the first 10,000 Syrians arrived about a week ago; McCallum says the government will “easily” hit its deadline of bringing a further 15,000 refugees into the country by the end of February.

“We can deliver one, two, three, four, even five flights per day so the challenge is no longer to get the refugees here,” McCallum said.

The new issue facing the government is to resettle those Syrians into Canadian communities, he added.

“The challenge today going forward is to receive them well, to help them find a place to live, a job, language training, all of those things and that involves working with provincial governments and municipalities on the settlement side.”

Further indications of the shifting nature of the challenge:

As Ottawa places thousands of Syrian refugees in hotels and shelters while they hunt for permanent housing, private sponsorship groups are clamouring for families to help.

The disconnect, say critics, is a disservice to the government-assisted families cramped inside the not-so-welcoming temporary accommodation and to the eager community volunteers who have raised the money and have everything ready to receive the newcomers for a new life in Canada.

“The sponsorship group I chair has been ready since mid-December, but there had been no offers. My group is one of 18 affiliated with the Rosedale United Church. No one is getting any referrals,” said former Toronto Mayor John Sewell.

“I suspect there are three or four hundred sponsorship groups in Toronto who are ready to take families, if the government will only refer them to these groups.”

On Tuesday, two cities — Vancouver and Ottawa — said they are halting their reception of government-assisted Syrian refugees as settlement agencies there try to work through housing bottlenecks.

Syrian refugees eligible for resettlement to Canada must first be vetted by the United Nations refugee agency before being referred to Canadian officials abroad and assigned to the three different streams: fully supported by the federal government, private sponsors and the blended class with responsibilities shared between the two.

The government gets the first dip into selecting the eligible refugees recommended by its visa posts and the leftovers are then put into a pool of profiles for the selection of the 100 faith and community groups that hold refugee sponsorship agreements with Ottawa.

Local sponsorship groups that were formed after the Liberal government launched the massive Syrian resettlement plan in November, must partner with the sponsorship agreement holders.

According to Brian Dyck, chair of the Sponsorship Agreement Holders’ Association, some 300 Syrian refugee profiles have been posted since the beginning of January and they were quickly snapped up by his members.

“The matching system was designed for small-scale sponsorship interest. To adapt it to the current public interest is a big challenge,” Dyck explained.

Refugees wait in hotels while sponsorship groups clamour for families to help

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Syrian Family’s Tragedy Goes Beyond Iconic Image of Boy on Beach – The New York Times

2016/01/18 Leave a comment

Syrian_Family’s_Tragedy_Goes_Beyond_Iconic_Image_of_Boy_on_Beach_-_The_New_York_TimesA good in-depth profile of the extended Kurdi family and how they have been dispersed as Syria fell apart:

When Alan Kurdi’s tiny body washed up on a beach in Turkey, forcing the world to grasp the pain of Syria’s refugees, the 2-year-old boy was just one member of a family on the run, scattered by nearly five years of upheaval.

As a Turkish officer lifted the boy from the shallow waves at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, one of Alan’s teenage cousins was alone on a bus in Hungary, fleeing the fighting back home in Damascus.

An aunt was stuck in Istanbul, nursing a baby, as her son and daughter worked 18-hour shifts in a sweatshop so the family could eat. Dozens of other relatives — aunts, uncles and cousins — had fled the war in Syria or were making plans to flee.

And just weeks after Alan’s image shocked the world in September, another aunt prepared to do what she had promised herself to avoid: set sail with four of her children on the same perilous journey.

“We die together, or we live together and make a future,” her 15-year-old daughter said, concluding, as have hundreds of thousands of other Syrians, that there was no going back, and that the way to security led through great risk.

This image of Alan’s body washed up on a beach in Turkey led to an outpouring of concern for Syrian refugees. Since then, at least 100 more children have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Nilufer Demir, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 

Alan, whose mother and brother drowned with him, belonged to a sprawling clan from Syria’s long-oppressed Kurdish minority. But for most of his closest relatives, that identity was secondary to the cosmopolitan ethos of the Syrian capital, Damascus, where they grew up. They barely spoke Kurdish, identified mainly as Syrian and joined no faction.

So when war broke out, and political ties, sect and ethnicity became life-or-death matters, they were on their own.

Interviews with 20 relatives, in Iraqi Kurdistan, in Istanbul, in five German towns and by phone in Syria, tell a story of a family chewed up by one party to the Syrian conflict after another: the Syrian government, the Islamic State, neighboring countries, the West.

Source: Syrian Family’s Tragedy Goes Beyond Iconic Image of Boy on Beach – The New York Times

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Germany’s Post-Cologne Hysteria – The New York Times

2016/01/15 Leave a comment

Good nuanced commentary by Anna Sauerbrey, an editor on the opinion page of the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel:

… precisely when the country needs a coolheaded conversation about the impact of Germany’s new refugee population, we’re playing musical chairs: Everybody runs for a seat to the left and to the right, afraid to remain in the middle, apparently undecided.

The irony is that the Cologne attacks, by highlighting the issue of refugees and their culture, raise an incredibly important question and at the same time make it almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation about it.

This isn’t the first wave of migrants to postwar Germany, and it’s not the first time that the left and the right have played their respective roles of under- and overestimating the challenges of integration.

The left has long ignored the established correlations between crime and the poverty and poor education that plague refugee communities; the right has long overestimated the link between the refugees’ culture and criminal activity, even when studies show no such link exists (excepting so-called crimes of honor, which are extremely rare).

The real question we should be asking is not whether there is something inherently wrong with the refugees, but whether Germany is doing an effective job of integrating them — and if not, whether something can be done to change that.

None of this, however, fits into a TV sound bite or a tweet. Even if it did, it would probably fail to reach its audience in the heated atmosphere of the moment.

Assumptions have replaced observation, assertion has replaced assessment, and ideology has replaced evidence. With its vision thus distorted, Germany is speeding toward a multicultural society, chased by the mob on the Internet, without any idea of what that society should look like.

We need to regain our sense of balance — or it’s just a question of time until we hit a wall.

Source: Germany’s Post-Cologne Hysteria – The New York Times

Much more nuanced than the Globe’s Margaret Wente:

Germany’s brutal immigrant awakening

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What the 10,000th Syrian refugee can expect from life in Canada

2016/01/14 Leave a comment

Good account of the welcoming process:

By the time 10,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in the country, Canadians will have fine-tuned their welcome act into a national ritual.

Tuesday was expected to be the day that the 10,000th Syrian refugee arrives in Canada. Two planes carrying 465 refugees were scheduled to arrive at Toronto Pearson International Airport sometime Tuesday, although it’s not known when they will land. Pearson reported some flight cancellations and delays due to snowy weather conditions earlier in the day.

A plane carrying 155 was also bound for Montreal.

When they land, hundreds of volunteers and aid workers will have already arranged shelter, food and clothing for their first night in Canada. Most refugees who land in Toronto will stay at a hotel such as the Toronto Plaza Hotel in North York, where they will find a hot meal and even winter coats.

From there, many will be picked up by volunteer private sponsors who have helped set them up with an apartment and guarantee their financial security for at least one year.

About half of the refugees who have arrived so far have been privately sponsored by groups such as the Armenian Community Centre of Toronto. Since Dec. 10, when the first plane arrived, the centre has accepted more than 700 refugees, says one of the refugee sponsorship organizers, Apkar Mirakian.

It was during that first arrival, Mirakian said, that the refugees started what became a kind of welcome tradition. Instead of bee-lining for the community centre, where they would meet their sponsor family, they headed straight to the adjacent church.

“They wanted to go to the church, because they had to thank God and Canada. God because he gave them an opportunity for living now, and Canada because it gave them an opportunity to live in Canada,” Mirakian said.

Source: What the 10,000th Syrian refugee can expect from life in Canada | Toronto Star

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ICYMI: Canada rejects African-American’s asylum claim

2016/01/13 Leave a comment

Expected:

A Canadian tribunal has rejected a claim for refugee status from an African-American man who said he feared persecution and police abuse in the United States based on his race, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada said on Friday.

While saying he did find Kyle Lydell Canty to have a genuine fear of returning to his home country, adjudicator Ron Yamauchi said that was not enough to grant asylum.

A string of shootings of black men by U.S. police over the past 18 months have led to widespread protests and the issue has fuelled a civil rights movement under the name Black Lives Matter.

“The Act does not protect claimants from every form of ill-treatment, suffering, and hardship,” he wrote in the decision, dated Dec. 3. “It is addressed at situations of persecution, which is serious harm, an interference with a basic human right.”

He added: “There are no substantial grounds to believe that his removal to the United States of America would subject him personally to a danger of torture.”

Source: Canada rejects African-American’s asylum claim – The Globe and Mail

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Canada ‘like heaven’ for Tibetan refugee

2016/01/12 Leave a comment

Good example of refugee integration:

Yangzom moved to Canada in fall 2011, volunteering and working for a while before leaving to do a master’s degree at the Central European University in Hungary. She returned in 2013 to Canada — the country that had finally given her a home and permanent status.

She chose Canada because it is a “country with a golden heart,” she explains. “It’s a country that has a strong tradition of being compassionate; a strong tradition of providing humanitarian assistance to refugees — and not just refugees, but helping immigrants as well.

“I heard great things about Canada — also about the health care and the education system, and that if you work really hard you can do things in Canada.”

Her sense of purpose is rooted deeply in her identity as a Tibetan and the fact she grew up without a homeland, she says. From the moment she arrived in Canada, “I volunteered right away because it was the fastest way for me to integrate into society and the community in order to have a smooth transition,” she says.

Within weeks, she was at Parkdale Legal Services, helping with interpretation and family reunification. Then she got a job at St. Christopher House as a newcomer co-ordinator.

“Even though I was born and raised as a refugee, I always live my life with hope,” she explains. “I push myself each day to do better.”

The only member of her family to attend college, Yangzom remains grateful for all the opportunities she has had.

“Canada, which is multicultural and respects other people’s rights and … other cultures as well — it’s like heaven for me. The fact I’m in Canada, I’m really thankful.”

Source: Canada ‘like heaven’ for Tibetan refugee | Toronto Star

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How one family is learning to adapt on the first day of school in Canada

2016/01/06 2 Comments

Good account of integration in action (Canadian schools score extremely well in the OECD’s comparative PISA education scores for immigrant integration):

At 8 a.m. on a frigid Monday morning, six children of the Al Rassoul family are lined up inside the door of their new Scarborough house, all ready for the first day of school in their adopted country.

The boys shuffle their new winter boots as their mother and two aunts tug on their toques and scarves. Their five-year-old sister, Mariah, the class clown of the group, bounces around in her Minnie Mouse jeans and purple backpack, trading high fives with anyone who will play.

How this morning will go, no one can say for sure. The family arrived in Toronto barely more than two weeks ago. Forced to give up their old life in Homs, Syria, by fighting that raged within a stone’s throw of their house, they spent four years in Lebanon before being offered a chance to come to Canada as refugees. None of the kids got any formal schooling in their exile. None speaks more than a few words of English.

How on earth are they to cope with the new ways of the Canadian school system? How on earth will the schools cope with them?

The answer in both cases: pretty well, considering. Apart from one little drama – an epic tantrum by little Mariah, who makes an impression by hurling a sneaker at the school principal – the kids have a good first day.

Their father, Mahmoud Al Rassoul, and his wife, Isaaf Al Omar, have eight kids in all. One of them, Malek, 15, has to wait for an assessment of his language and academic skills before he gets assigned to a high school. Another, three-year-old Maaly, is too young for school.

That leaves six. Two of the boys go off to middle school, driven there by the family’s well-organized Canadian sponsor group. The four younger kids get a lift to Iroquois Junior Public, a strikingly diverse elementary school of around 270 students near Finch Avenue and McCowan Road.

Iroquois welcomes them with a minimum of fuss, just as it has welcomed countless other new kids from far-flung places. After a few minutes milling around the office, where Mariah admires the aquarium and learns the word “fish,” the kids are dispatched to their various classrooms. That’s how it works at this level. No preliminaries. Straight into the deep end, where the water at least is warm.

In Christina Fan’s kindergarten class, Mariah takes her place on the carpet, learning to sit with her legs crossed like the others. “Good morning, Mariah,” her classmates sing out together, clapping their hands in welcome. When Ms. Fan asks who wants to be Mariah’s friend, hands shoot up.

The numbers for Toronto:

Iroquois is well-used to absorbing newcomers. According to its website, all but 30 or so of its students listed a primary language other than English. Most are from South Asian or East Asian backgrounds. Chinese and Tamil are two of the most common home languages.

Of the quarter of a million kids in the Toronto District School Board, 22 per cent were born outside of Canada. Last year alone, the TDSB took in 5,676 new-immigrant childrenkids. Guidance counsellors, English-as-a-second-language teachers, social workers and special-education instructors are ready to step in if a kid falters.

Source: How one family is learning to adapt on the first day of school in Canada – The Globe and Mail

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Why some Syrian #refugees decline Canada’s resettlement offer

2016/01/05 Leave a comment

Not totally surprising that some prefer the known versus the unknown, and this applies more to less well-educated. The upshot is that the self-selection process will likely favour those better able to integrate:

“We are afraid of the unknown,” said Mr. al-Khlef. If the family went to Canada, he reasoned, they’d lose their UN food aid and cash assistance worth about $290 each month. The poverty and isolation he knew was preferable to the unknown elsewhere.

Other families from comparable socio-economic backgrounds said they had similar reasons for saying no. Omar Shahadeh, an illiterate construction worker living in Jerash, said it was “better to be among Arabs like us” than to wade into a new and uncertain culture. He said his decision was reinforced by the opinions of friends who doubted Canada’s commitment to the resettled refugees.

“People said the government of Canada would only care for us for one month, and then they would leave us. Lots of people are refusing for this reason,” said Mr. Shahadeh.

Despite having four children who have scant chance of attending university and beginning careers in Jordan, Mr. Shahadeh, like Mr. al-Khlef, admitted he was afraid of change.

The fathers have become part of a broader trend, where more informed families are taking up offers to resettle in Canada, and those with less access to information are saying no.

For many who do go, the fear of the unknown is overridden by a desire to give their children the chance of a better life, said UNHCR’s Ms. McDonnell.

“Many of those who are accepting this chance at a new life tell our team they are doing it for their children, to ensure they have a promising future.”

Source: Why some Syrian refugees decline Canada’s resettlement offer – The Globe and Mail

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#WelcomeRefugees: Milestones and key figures

2016/01/04 Leave a comment

_WelcomeRefugees__Key_figures_1To the government’s credit, it is providing regular updates on the number of Syrian refugees, even if these show that the degree to which it has failed to meet its revised commitments.

_WelcomeRefugees__Key_figures_2Contrast this with the previous government’s repeated refusal to provide specific numbers until forced to.

On the less positive side, the regular CIC operational statistics for citizenship and immigration have not been updated since March 2015.

These should be released as automatically, and without political interference, as regular Statistics Canada data releases.

Source: #WelcomeRefugees: Milestones and key figures

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ICYMI: How does Canada compare when it comes to resettling refugees? Ibbitson

2016/01/04 Leave a comment

Good survey article, and noting correctly the advantages of relative geographic isolation:

So Canada’s contribution stacks up well in comparison to some of our closest allies. But our effort pales in comparison with that of Germany, which has taken an estimated one million Middle Eastern refugees this year. “We can do this,” Chancellor Angela Merkel repeats over and over, and she appears to be right.

Sweden has also been exceptionally generous. The nation of 9.6 million people took in 150,000 Syrian refugees in the past year, although authorities have started to crack down in the wake of increasing public resistance.

The absence of any similar backlash here to high intakes of refugees and immigrants – not only during this crisis, but year after year – is Canada’s special blessing. Part of the reason is that most of us are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Our settler culture welcomes settlers.

But the real secret to Canada’s generosity may be its oceans. It is very difficult for a refugee to reach Canada uninvited, making it easier to screen applicants for criminal, security or health risks, and to choose refugees who have a good chance of integrating successfully into Canadian society.

European nations pushing back against the daily tide of desperate humanity flooding north out of the Middle East have no such luxury. Authorities must either admit people about whom they know little or seal their borders.

Mr. McCallum is right. History will not record what targets were missed by how many weeks. It will, instead, note Canada’s impressive humanitarian achievement in rescuing Middle Eastern refugees, even as it looks upon what Germany accomplished with awe.

Source: How does Canada compare when it comes to resettling refugees? – The Globe and Mail

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