USA: Asylum rates drop as immigration cases are fast-tracked, research finds

2022/12/02 Leave a comment

Balance between speed/efficiency and fairness, there are trade-offs:

Fast-tracked immigration cases appear to be hurting migrants’ chances of being granted asylum, researchers are finding.

“The big takeaway message is that the Biden administration really is trying to speed up cases but data shows when you speed up cases they lose,” Syracuse University professor and researcher Austin Kocher told Border Report as he toured the South Texas border on Wednesday.

Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, orTRAC, one of the nation’s leading researchers on immigration court cases, on Tuesday released a study that found that since July, asylum grant rates have fallen and it “coincides with the extremely rapid increase in expedited cases.”

Although Fiscal Year 2022 had the largest number of individuals granted asylum of any year in immigration court history, in digging into the data, researchers found that the quicker the cases went through the courts, the lower the asylum seekers’ chances.

TRAC found that when asylum cases were completed within three to 18 months, only 31% of cases were granted asylum.

“More asylum cases were granted last year than any other year but the grant rate is actually going down in recent months,” Kocher said.

(TRAC Graphic)

Border Report met up with Kocher on Wednesday as he was on day 5 of his visit to South Texas as part of a seven-week research tour of the entire Southwest border.

He said immigration cases require collecting massive amounts of evidence and documents, and TRAC data has found that migrants who retain lawyers have a higher chance of being granted asylum. He said the rushed cases could be limiting and preventing asylum-seekers from gathering all the data they need to present full cases to the judges, and it could be preventing them from getting legal counsel altogether.

“We definitely know that the Biden administration has tried to accelerate these cases to try to clear out the backlog,” Kocher said. “They really are taking the backlog seriously and they really do want asylum cases to get decided more quickly but the problem is, as the data shows, that if you really speed cases up individuals don’t always have time to get attorneys and they don’t always have time to gather the full application materials that are necessary.”

Kocher crossed into Reynosa, Mexico, early Wednesday, and said he spoke with several migrants there who expressed their lack of resources and lack of legal aid as they wait across the border due to Title 42 restrictions.

Source: Asylum rates drop as immigration cases are fast-tracked, research finds

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Advocates urge Ottawa to remove quota on Afghan refugee sponsorship program

2022/10/31 Leave a comment

Of note – quoted:

A group of advocates is urging the federal government to remove the limit on applications to sponsor certain Afghan refugees in Canada – or at least stop counting rejected applications towards it.

The government introduced a new program last month to allow Canadian individuals and organizations to privately sponsor up to 3,000 Afghan refugees who don’t have refugee status from the United Nations refugee agency or a foreign state.

It said it will accept sponsorship applications under the new program until Oct. 17, 2023, or once it has received applications for 3,000 refugees – whichever comes first.

In a letter sent to Immigration Minister Sean Fraser last week, a volunteer with Northern Lights Canada, a non-profit that’s been helping Afghan refugees in Toronto, said the new program’s cap is “highly prejudicial,” compared to the accommodations made for Ukrainians who want to come to Canada.

“Minister Fraser, I urge you to reconsider the design of the Afghan special program,” Heather Finley wrote in her letter dated Oct. 22.

“By raising the applicant quota and removing rejected applications from it, you will allow a more fair and equitable opportunity for Afghans in Canada to sponsor their families to join them here.”

Stephen Watt, co-founder of Northern Lights Canada, said the new program doesn’t come close to meeting the needs of Afghan refugees and their families and friends in Canada.

“Just having 3,000 spots in a crisis where millions of people are very recently displaced. It is insulting,” he said in an interview.

Almost 109,000 Ukrainians arrived to Canada between Jan. 1 and Oct. 23 under special programs the government introduced to help unlimited numbers of Ukrainians and their family members flee the war in Ukraine to safety.

Meanwhile, Ottawa has committed to resettling a total of 40,000 Afghan refugees after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August of last year, with fewer than 23,000 having arrived in Canada so far.

Immigration Department spokeswoman Isabelle Dubois said the program that has allowed Ukrainians to come to Canada is using the department’s existing temporary resident visa processes, networks and infrastructure to bring as many of them as quickly as possible.

“This is not a refugee program, as compared to our Afghanistan refugee resettlement program, since Ukrainians have indicated that they need temporary safe harbour,” she said.

“Many of them intend to return to their home country when it will be safe to do so.”

Dubois said the government provided 3,000 additional spaces for organizations wanting to sponsor Afghan refugees in addition to the 3,000 spaces under the new special program.

“We are also processing existing and new private sponsorship applications for up to 7,000 Afghan refugees,” she said.

Watt said the new program’s application system crashed shortly after the government opened it at midnight on Oct. 17 due to many people rushing to submit applications.

He said many will likely end up rejected on a technicality because the government said it will process only the first 3,000 applicants and thus sponsors had to raise funds and write their sponsorship applications quickly.

“It’s so disappointing,” he said.

“This announcement that whether (the applications) are good or bad, we’re still going to count them towards the total. So, what that did was create this condition where people were frantically rushing to put together applications.”

Dubois confirmed the government will count all completed applications towards the new program’s 3,000 limit and said the department is currently reviewing the received applications to determine whether it reached that cap.

“We understand some clients experienced issues when submitting an application. No applications were lost as files were automatically backed up,” Dubois said.

“Applications are reviewed on a first-in, first-out basis to determine their completeness. We will continue to send out acknowledgments of receipt for applications that are determined to be complete and accepted into processing.”

Watt said the government should remove the cap on how many Afghan refugees can be privately sponsored for one year to allow people to work on the sponsorship applications – which he said can take months to put together because the requirements are so stringent and excessive.

“If you had a family of seven that may be $70,000 you have to get together. You have to get all the sponsorship documents lined up. You have to write the application,” he said.

“Filling out PDFs perfectly in perfect English when you’reanew Canadian, and having to having to rise to the challenge of these applications which are very demanding even for people who are completely fluent in English and have great use of computer skills.”

Andrew Griffith, a former director at the federal Immigration Department, said he is not aware of any government immigration or refugee program that counted rejected application towards the target other than the new special program for Afghan refugees.

He said many have been criticizing the government for apparently prioritizing Ukrainian refugees over Afghan refugees.

“The situations for both sets of refugees are dire in many cases,” he said. “I’m not (trying to) apply any value statements on that, but it does highlight another discrepancy between the two groups of refugees in my view.”

Griffith said it’s true that the Ukrainians are formally coming to Canada on temporary visas, but many of them may end up staying here.

“Realistically, how many of the people accepted from Ukraine will go back?” he said. “I think most of them would probably like to go. I don’t deny that. But it depends on the situation.”

Source: Advocates urge Ottawa to remove quota on Afghan refugee sponsorship program

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Japan has taken in hundreds of Ukrainians. The welcome for others has been less warm

2022/10/31 Leave a comment

Of note:

A dozen Ukrainian students sit in a classroom, studying basic Japanese to help them navigate life in a new country. Among them is Sergei Litvinov, a 29-year-old trained chef, who arrived in June. He says he’s been listening to Japanese rock music since his teen years.

Coming to Japan is “a dream come true,” he says with a laugh. “But I’m not happy, because it’s a terrible story in Ukraine.”

Litvinov is one of nearly 2,000 Ukrainians admitted to Japan on a temporary basis since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, according to Japan’s justice ministry.

The Ukrainians have been met with an outpouring of sympathy and hospitality in the country. “It was the first time I’ve gotten so many phone calls and emails from society, wanting to assist the refugees from Ukraine,” says Kazuko Fushimi, who handles public relations at the Tokyo-based Japan Association for Refugees.

But the warm welcome Japan has given the Ukrainians contrasts with how it has treated other foreigners fleeing conflict and persecution over the years, say human rights groups. Of 169 Afghans who fled to Japan after the Taliban took over in August 2021, 58 went back to Afghanistan “due to what they say was pressure and a lack of support from the Japanese Foreign Ministry,” Japan’s Kyodo news service reported last month.

For now, the Japanese government has given the Ukrainians residency and work permits lasting up to a year. But for those from other countries, it’s often a years-long struggle to attain similar benefits and privileges.

The central government has provided visas and work permits. Local governments have provided food, housing and living allowances.

Litvinov is one of a group of 70 Ukrainians sent to the port city of Yokohama – 17 miles from the Japanese capital Tokyo — where local authorities are providing for temporary accommodation, food and living expenses.

Significantly, Japan is not calling the Ukrainians refugees, but “evacuees.” That is because Tokyo expects them all to go home eventually.

Historically, Japan accepts very few refugees. Last year, it granted just 74 applicants refugee status — the highest number ever, but less than 1% of the total who applied, according to the Japan Association for Refugees.

Some in Japan see their country as mono-ethnic — not a nation of immigrants. But the idea is a matter of debate.

Human rights groups and refugee advocates say the system is deliberately designed to set a high bar for successful refugee applications. Refugees applying for asylum in Japan must demonstrate they face life-threatening persecution at home.

Heydar Safari Diman has been trying to do just that for more than 30 years, since fleeing from Iran to Japan, which he became interested in through watching TV dramas and movies, including the films of director Akira Kurosawa. He does not want to say exactly what persecution he faced in Iran, because he fears it could jeopardize family members still in the country.

But authorities have repeatedly rejected his bids for refugee status. They detained him for a total of more than four years without any explanation, he says, in what he calls hellish conditions.

“I like Japan and Japanese people, but I hate the ones in the detention center,” he says, speaking fluent Japanese. “How could they bully us like that? What did we do? We are refugees. I have no criminal record.”

In 2019, Safari Diman was one of about 100 detainees who went on hunger strikes to protest their detention. Safari Diman says he sank into deep depression and thought about ending his own life.

“You need a lot of courage to commit suicide. It’s very difficult to kill yourself in there. And I did not have that courage,” he says.

Tokyo-based attorney Chie Komai, who represents Safari Diman and others seeking to stay in Japan, took his case to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2019. She argued that her client’s detention was arbitrary because Japanese immigration authorities can detain foreigners indefinitely, without any judicial review.

The U.N. working group agreed with her. “They made it clear that the Japanese immigration detention system is in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

The Japanese government objected to the U.N. working group’s findings, saying they were “based on factual errors” and disputing that its detentions were arbitrary. But it did not dispute the details of Safari Diman’s case. He is now out on what is called “provisional release,” and has not been detained since the ruling.

Safari Diman, who’s subsisted in Japan on donations from friends and supporters, says he does not expect the sort of benefits the Ukrainians are getting.

“I’m not asking for Japanese taxpayers to support me,” he says. “If authorities recognize me as a refugee, I will work and pay taxes.”

Other cases have also fueled debate over Japan’s treatment of refugees. They include the death in an immigration detention center last year of 33-year-old Sri Lankan Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali, detained for overstaying her visa.

Prosecutors dropped charges against immigration officials accused of responsibility for her death.

In another case, last month a Japanese court ordered the government to compensate the family of a 43-year-old Cameroonian man who died in an immigration detention center in 2014.

The public outcry over deaths in immigration detention centers appears to have prompted the government to drop controversial amendments to immigration laws. The amendments would have made it easier for the government to deportforeigners whose bids for refugee status had failed.

Japan’s government says it will extend financial assistance to the Ukrainians for an additional six months. The double standard is not lost on officials like Kazuhiro Suzuki, a Yokohama city official who is involved in running the program for Ukrainians.

“We’ve only been supporting the Ukrainian evacuees,” he says, observing the students from a corner of the classroom. “While the situation of refugees from other countries hasn’t changed.”

He adds: “Every day we keep working, but this discrepancy bothers us.”

Source: Japan has taken in hundreds of Ukrainians. The welcome for others has been less warm

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Will a former refugee’s trip to see his dying father cost him his status in Canada?

2022/10/26 Leave a comment

Understand the personal pain but it does undermine his claim to refugee status as it does with others who return to the country they fled. Hard to have it both ways:

When Medhi Ghamoshi Ramandi was finally granted asylum in Canada in 2019, one of the first things he did was leave the country.

The Iranian man wanted to see his wife and two children, whom he had not seen for six years since his escape from that country’s regime.

Aware of the safety risks of returning to his homeland, he got a refugee travel document from Canada and flew his family to Armenia, where he rented a place for three months so they could try to make up for some of their time lost.

“We had not seen each other for six years and we reunited in Armenia,” recalls Ramandi. “We did a lot of sightseeing there. We had very good memories of the first weeks there. I felt alive again.”

But then came the news of his father being diagnosed with an acute form of colon cancer.

“We didn’t think my father would last six months. There were photos of him with his stomach torn open and stuff like that,” says Ramandi. “My father was pleading, ‘Please come back so I can see you one last time.’ That’s what made me decide to go back.”

Unable to travel to his homeland with his refugee travel document, Ramandi took a chance to apply for an Iranian passport in Armenia and crossed a land border into Iran, at 2 a.m., hoping he wouldn’t be flagged.

Once inside the country, he says, he holed up in his parents’ house before sneaking into the hospital late at night and staying at his father’s bedside till the morning for fear of being spotted and reported to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

After 12 days in Iran with his dying father, the 50-year-old returned to Toronto on Sept. 23, 2019, via Armenia. 

He was immediately stopped and held for an investigation by the Canada Border Services Agency.

His offence was possessing a passport from the same regime that he had run away from and “reavailing” himself to Iran. 

To the Canadian authorities, that suggested he no longer required Canada’s protection and that he could be stripped of his refugee status.

“I had to go and see my father. He was dying,” said a sobbing Ramandi, whose application for permanent residence has been suspended since 2019 while officials are investigating whether to refer him to the refugee board and have his protected status ended.

It is a process known as cessation. The number of new cessation applications against individuals who have been granted asylum in Canada — many of them already permanent residents, sometimes for years — rose to 399 in 2021 from just 137 in 2013. The then-Conservative government, looking to crack down on bogus refugees, changed the law to not only go after former refugees’ protected status but also their permanent residence.

Those who return to their country of origin or simply apply for or renew their old passports, even just to visit a third country, can be pursued by Canadian border officials and lose both their refugee status and permanent residence, and ultimately face deportation.

“Technology is improving, so people’s movements are easier to track,” says immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo. “There is a backlog that has now slowly moved through the system and there are investigations going on. 

“We’re seeing now an apex of cases.”

As of the end of June, there were 572 cessation applications before the Immigration and Refugee Board, down from a backlog of 781 cases in 2020.

Under the immigration law, Canada can take away someone’s protected status if they have:

  • “Voluntarily reavailed” themselves of the protection of their country of nationality;
  • Reacquired their nationality, as in obtaining or renewing a passport from the country of persecution;
  • “Re-established” in that country; or
  • When the reasons for which the person sought refugee protection no longer exist.

Lawyer Justin Jian-Yi Toh said investigations in cessation proceedings are often triggered when individuals are flagged by border agents upon returning from their country of origin or when they are found to have travelled back from a third country with a passport issued from the state they fled. 

Many are also caught when they are asked to provide detailed travel records to fulfil the physical residence requirement for the renewal of their residence cards or citizenship applications.

“Of course, for the average person, they don’t think about all that stuff when they get a passport,” said Toh. “They think, ‘I need a passport to travel. A passport is a travelling licence.’ That’s it.”

In the eyes of Canadian officials, when that happens, it means the refugee traveller has restored relations with their country of origin and no longer needs Canada’s protection.

“Then you see a situation where, for example, people get refugee status in Canada,” said Toh, “but then their parents get very sick and they say to themselves, ‘I’m in danger in this country, but this is my mom, and this is my dad. Maybe I can pop in and see them one last time without people noticing. I’m there and then get out quickly.”

How a court ruling could change things

The refugee board has allowed the majority of the cessation requests referred to it by the border agency, with an acceptance rate above 80 per cent. In 2020, it reached an all-time high, at 95 per cent.

But both Bellissimo and Toh hope that the rising trend will be blunted by a Federal Court of Appeal decision earlier this year that found each cessation proceeding should be “fact-dependent” and should not be applied in “a mechanistic or rote manner.”

The case, represented by the two lawyers, involved Maria Camila Galindo Camayo, who came to Canada for asylum with her mother and brothers from Colombia when she was 12 and who was granted protection in Canada in 2010 as a minor dependent.

After she became a permanent resident in 2012, she was found to have obtained and renewed her Colombian passport, and visited her homeland five times as a teen and adult to visit and care for her father, who suffers from mental illness and recurrent cancer, and to attend a humanitarian mission to aid children in poverty. She also used the passport to travel to Cuba, the United States and Mexico.

When in Colombia, concerned for her own safety, she hired professional armed guards, travelled in multiple cars, taking different routes, and remained inside family members’ homes as much as possible, she told the refugee board.

In 2017, border agents referred Camayo to the refugee board, which took away her protected status and permanent residence in 2019, despite her arguments that she was unaware of the cessation laws and their consequences.

Although on paper Camayo met the three key elements in assessing someone’s return to a country of persecution — voluntary, intentional and actual physical visit — the Federal Court overruled the refugee board decision, saying that the conclusion was unreasonable.

In dismissing the government’s appeal, the Federal Court of Appeal said the test for cessation should not be applied in “a mechanistic or rote manner” and it provided detailed guidance to assist the refugee board in assessing individual nuances leading to someone reavailing themselves to the country that they once feared.

“The focus throughout the analysis should be on whether the refugee’s conduct — and the inferences that can be drawn from it — can reliably indicate that the refugee intended to waive the protection of the country of asylum,” the appeal court said in sending the case back to the refugee board for redetermination.

‘My father was dying of cancer’

Ramandi said no one ever advised him not to use an Iranian passport or about the potential consequences. He said he tried to keep a low profile when sneaking back into Iran because he worried about his safety. The visit to Tehran wasn’t even part of his plan as he only learned about his father’s hospitalization toward the end of his three-month trip in Armenia.

“My father was dying of cancer. … The immigration issue didn’t even cross my mind,” said Ramandi, a Protestant Christian, who fled religious persecution in Iran and arrived in Canada in 2013 with the help of smugglers.

Still distraught from leaving his father and family behind, he said he was terrified when he was stopped by the border agents at Toronto’s Pearson airport.

“I told them about seeing my family in Armenia and about my father in Iran. I told them everything about the trip,” Ramandi, a baker, said through an interpreter. “I had no idea about the immigration implications.”

His father died a few months after his visit and Ramandi has not travelled or seen his wife, son, 18, and daughter, 14, while his permanent residence application is on hold.

“I came here when I was 41 and I’m now 50. It’s been almost 10 years and I’ve only been able to spend three months with my family in Armenia,” said Ramandi. “It’s so hard. I don’t have any direction for my life anymore.”

Immigration lawyer Richard Wazana said those with “ceased” status are also barred from appeals and risk assessments before removals for a year and are only eligible for humanitarian considerations if there are children involved and their interests are affected, or if there’s a serious mental or medical health issue.

The law, he said, has caused a lot of misery for these former refugees, few understanding that their protected status can be taken away even after they become permanent residents.

“Many people don’t apply for citizenship because they’re under the mistaken impression that permanent residency is, as it sounds, permanent. Unfortunately, it’s far from it,” he said. “Really, no one is safe until they obtain citizenship.”

Wazana has a client who fled political persecution in Libya and returned to see family only after the authoritarian regime of Moammar Gadhafi fell and it was safe for him to visit. Even though Canada has deferred all removals to Libya due to the volatile political situation there, the border agency pursued cessation of the man’s permanent resident status.

“Even using that passport from your home country to travel to a third country could potentially lead to a cessation application,” said Wazana. “My advice is just to forget about that passport, put it away and never use it again.”

Source: Will a former refugee’s trip to see his dying father cost him his status in Canada?

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Canada deports more than 200 North Korean escapees who took South Korean citizenship

2022/10/18 Leave a comment

Of note:

Canada has deported 242 North Korean escapees since 2018, and is in the process of sending home 512 more, after finding that many had gained South Korean citizenship before coming to Canada, RFA has learned from two Canadian government agencies.

Most of the deportees are sent back to South Korea, where they initially landed after escaping from the North – usually a harrowing journey through China where they must avoid capture and forced repatriation. And because Seoul claims sovereignty over the entire Korean peninsula, escapees are granted citizenship upon arrival.

But some then go on to Canada, after having a hard time adjusting to life in the South – and that’s where the problem arises in obtaining refugee status.

Typically, to be granted refugee status, an asylum seeker must present evidence of being persecuted in their home country. But because the North Korean escapees found refuge in the South, and were granted citizenship there, they could be excluded from refugee protection, the government agency that provides protection to refugees, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), told RFA.

Essentially, if the asylum-seekers had gone directly to Canada, they would have a better chance of gaining refugee status and be allowed to stay in the country.

The IRCC said that while there may still be instances in which a North Korean requires protection, many asylum petitions have been turned down due to applicants’ South Korean citizenship.

The statistics on deported North Korean escapees were compiled by the Canada Border Services Agency, which is responsible for border control, immigration enforcement and customs services.

“The Canada Border Services Agency places the highest priority on removal cases involving national security, organized crime, crimes against humanity, and criminals – regardless of country of origin,” the agency told RFA’s Korean Service.

“Removals of failed refugees and individuals with other immigration violations are also necessary to maintain the integrity of Canada’s immigration system,” it said.

Difficult Adjustment

More than 33,000 North Koreans have found their way to the South and resettled over the years, most of them having arrived after the 1994-1998 North Korean famine that killed as many as 2 million people by some estimates,  and pushed the country to the brink of collapse.

They risked their lives to escape, most having traveled more than 3,000 miles through China, all the while avoiding capture and forced repatriation and dealing with shady brokers and traffickers. From there they navigated through several southeast Asian countries in the hope of one day boarding a plane headed for Seoul’s Incheon International Airport.

The South welcomes such escapees. They are sent to government-funded orientation programs and given startup money and a living stipend as they settle into their new lives.

But for many escapees, the South is not the land of milk and honey they expected.

The fast-paced life of South Korea seems too hectic, and the people speak Korean peppered with unfamiliar loan words from the English language. Job skills the escapees may have had in the North might not translate into an equivalent position in the South Korean workforce.

And while they may physically blend in, many are made to feel that they are on the lower end of the social hierarchy in the South, due to discrimination and a resulting lack of opportunity to make their situation better.

Almost half of all North Korean refugees that settle in the South said they experienced discrimination in a 2017 poll by the South Korean government-backed National Human Rights Commission of Korea.

“Discrimination against North Korean defectors [in South Korea] is a very serious problem,” Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, a legal Analyst at the Seoul-based Transitional Justice Working Group, told RFA’s Korean Service.

Shin used the politically charged colloquial term “defector” which describes both defectors, who were part of the military or government at the time of their escape, and refugees, civilians who flee starvation or North Korea’s depressed economic situation. The term can, in some contexts, carry a negative connotation.

International Rights groups prefer to differentiate between defectors and refugees, depending on the circumstances of their escape.

“Of course, going abroad does not mean that there is no discrimination, but there is no such thing as being branded as a defector [outside of South Korea],” he said.

Hundreds therefore made the decision to move on from South Korea to Canada, where under the Resettlement Assistance Program they can get benefits that may include a household startup allowance and monthly income support.

Hiding immigration history

Since having a Republic of Korea passport is grounds to immediately reject an asylum application, many of the North Korean asylum-seekers in Canada try to hide evidence that they ever naturalized in South Korea.

According to a Canadian federal court document published Sept. 16, a North Korean refugee surnamed Kim, her husband with the family name Shin and their children were deprived of their refugee status in 2018 for concealing their South Korean citizenship. The document said deportation proceedings were to start.

Another refugee, surnamed Kang, was on the verge of being deported after it was discovered that he resided in South Korea in 2019.

Once the deportation order goes out, the refugees have a few options if they wish to remain in Canada.

According to a 2019 RFA report, over an 18-month period starting in January 2018, some 352 North Korean refugees in Canada lost their refugee status as the government at that time began revoking it in cases where they had lived in South Korea in 2013 or later.

The Canada Border Services Agency explained that a removal decision by an immigration officer can be subject to judicial and administrative review, during which the individuals involved in the case may seek leave to remain in the country.

Additionally, many of the refugees can apply for the Humanitarian and compassionate considerations program, said Sean Chung, the executive director of HanVoice, a Toronto-based nonprofit organization that assists North Koreans with settling in Canada.

Successful applicants to the program can obtain permanent residency in Canada if they are an exceptional case, such as when they have lived in Canada for a long period of time, or if there are special reasons that prevent someone from returning to their home country, he told RFA.

Source: Canada deports more than 200 North Korean escapees who took South Korean citizenship

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Trichur: Why Danby’s CEO is worried about refugee sponsorship as Canada teeters toward a recession

2022/10/08 Leave a comment

Of note, including the warning regarding the impact of a possible economic slump:

At a time when business leaders are bracing for a recession, Jim Estill is concerned about more than just his company’s bottom line.

The chief executive officer of Danby Appliances, a Guelph, Ont.-based manufacturer and distributor of household appliances, is also worried that an economic slump will further complicate efforts to sponsor and settle refugees.

Not only is the Canadian economy slowing, it has shed jobs for three consecutive months. Companies are still hiring, but the unemployment rate has climbed to 5.4 per cent.

That’s why Mr. Estill – who in conjunction with Danby, has sponsored hundreds of refugees since 2015 – is watching the cooling labour market with trepidation. After helping people from all over the world – including Syria, Congo, Myanmar, Venezuela, Afghanistan and Ukraine – he knows a recession will make it harder for refugees to find work and start new lives in Canada.

“If we end up with an unemployment rate that was higher, I could see people in the general population resenting refugees‚” he said during an interview at The Globe and Mail’s Growth Camp event for Canada’s top-growing companies.

As Mr. Estill points out, he and others faced little societal resistance to bringing in refugees when this country appeared to be swimming in unfilled jobs.

“Nobody was coming and taking your job. Because, okay, did you want the job at McDonald’s? No, there’s no lineup to take the job,” Mr. Estill said.

But social sentiments can shift during tougher economic times.

Sure, some of it is rooted in racism – but those people would have a problem with refugees even if GDP growth was going gangbusters.

Other folks, though, worry about the availability of jobs and affordable housing for their relatives and friends in a sputtering economy. That means a widely expected recession is shaping up to be a critical moment for refugee sponsorship and settlement in Canada.

History teaches us that newcomers often struggle to find and keep jobs during economic contractions. The COVID-19 downturn, for instance, disproportionately affected immigrant women in low-wage jobs.

“Immigrants often have more negative labour market outcomes during recessions than those born domestically,” a 2022 study by Statistics Canada states. It also notes that entering the labour market during a recession can result in a “scarring effect” that hurts immigrants’ earnings for years.

There’s not much research that focuses on refugees. But a 2019 Statistics Canada studydid track outcomes for 830,000 refugees from 13 countries.

Although it found “substantial” employment rates five years after their arrival, it also concluded their earnings varied based on their countries of origin.

“Ten years after entering Canada, the refugee groups with the highest earnings (i.e., from the former Yugoslavia, Poland and Colombia) earned roughly double what those with the lowest earnings did (i.e., from Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China),” the study said.

A separate Statscan paper, published in 2020, found that privately sponsored refugees – such as those helped by Mr. Estill – tend to have higher employment rates and earnings than government-assisted refugees – even if they have lower levels of education.

Although Mr. Estill does not permanently employ every adult he sponsors, Danby’s 90-day program provides them with short-term work, English lessons, assistance with résumé writing and finding job coaches.

”It’s not government money that is that is paying for these people, it’s private money. It’s my money that’s paying to settle them, so it doesn’t cost taxpayers,” Mr. Estill said.

That underscores the importance of private refugee sponsorships, including those undertaken by individual entrepreneurs and corporations.

Danby is not alone in its efforts to help displaced people.

Companies including Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., National Bank of Canada, Bombardier Inc., KPMG Canada and Stingray Group Inc. have committed to sponsoring Ukrainian refugees displaced by the Russian invasion – but so many others also need help.

Mr. Estill, for one, is calling on the federal government to allow more refugees to enter the country.

Canada was the first country to introduce a private sponsorship program more than 40 years ago. But even so, getting privately sponsored refugees into the country can take years, which is why Mr. Estill advises other executives the program will not address their company’s short-term hiring needs.

He’s right to encourage others to think about the long-term benefits to Canada.

After all, some former refugees, such as Rola Dagher, a Lebanese-Canadian who is currently global channel chief at Dell Technologies, have gone on to make great strides in the business world. She came to Canada via Cyprus.

That brings us back to Corporate Canada. Which companies will be next to offer refugees a lifeline during these uncertain times?

“My problems are very first-world problems,” Mr. Estill explains. “It’s that we might be going into a recession. Oh no, my sales might not be as high as I’d like them to be. But they’re first-world problems.”

Thank you, sir. Well said.

Source: Why Danby’s CEO is worried about refugee sponsorship as Canada teeters toward a recession

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This Afghan activist is fleeing the Taliban. Canada just rejected her visa request because it didn’t believe she’d go home

2022/10/04 Leave a comment

Will likely provoke reconsideration given the circumstances:

A prominent Afghan women’s rights activist desperately looking for refuge has been denied entry to Canada, despite a government program meant to resettle vulnerable Afghans just like her.

Farzana Adell Ghadiya, a Hazara minority facing persecution by the Taliban, recently received a boilerplate letter from Canadian immigration refusing an application for a temporary residence visa, which she required to enter the country for asylum.

To qualify for a visa, applicants must prove their ties — such as a job, home, financial assets or family — that will take them back to their home country and will leave Canada at the end of the visit.

Adell Ghadiya is in exile in a third country; she has asked the Star not to publish her whereabouts to protect her from repatriation. Given that she doesn’t dare return to Afghanistan, she explained her circumstances in the application and stated up front the purpose of her visit: to seek protection in Canada upon arrival.

“It’s shocking that the immigration department didn’t even take the time to read her affidavit and submissions, which lay out the threats to her life and the obstacles Farzana and many Afghans face in getting to Canada,” explains Matthew Behrens of the Ottawa-based Rural Refugee Rights Network, which is assisting the woman.

“It’s a fundamental breach of fairness to assess an application as something it isn’t. It shows how little value the lives of Afghan women have for the Canadian government.”

Adell Ghadiya was the chief of staff for the UN Commission on the Status of Women for the Afghan government overthrown by the Taliban last year. She is now in limbo in a country whose government, advocates say, is picking up Afghan refugees in sweeps and sending them back to the Taliban’s embrace.

Last year, Ottawa set a target to bring in 40,000 Afghans through a special immigration program for those who worked for the Canadian government in Afghanistan and a humanitarian program for women’s-rights advocates, human-rights defenders, journalists and at-risk minorities.

Adell Ghadiya’s supporters initially tried to get her here through the humanitarian program. However, to qualify, an applicant needs to first register with the United Nations Refugee Agency or the government of the country where they now live.

In the country where she is hiding, the UN agency stopped registering refugees a few years ago and the host government is friendly to the Taliban and reluctant to issue Afghans refugee certificates.

So her advocates helped her apply for temporary residence in Canada in early April, explicitly to seek refuge in the country upon arrival. Indeed, in the refusal letter, immigration officials noted that the purpose of her visit to Canada is not consistent with a temporary stay based on the circumstances she provided in the application.

“Your proposed length of stay in Canada is inconsistent with a temporary stay,” said the two-page form rejection, adding that she could re-apply if she can address those concerns and demonstrate “your situation meets the requirements.”

Adell Ghadiya said she’s devastated by the refusal, which she likens to murder, given the way the Taliban treat women’s-rights advocates who served under the fallen government of U.S.-supported president Ashraf Ghani.

“This is not consistent with the human values ​​that were previously announced by Canada to shelter Afghan women, and creates disappointment in my mind. The current situation of Afghanistan can be seen clearly and obviously to the world,” said Adell Ghadiya, who could face removal in the country she is in now when her visa there expires.

“I appeal to Immigration Minister Mr. Sean Fraser: you have the power to sign a permit to allow me to enter Canada. Why won’t you use that power and save my life?”

Sharen Craig, who is part of a women’s rights network in Ottawa helping Adell Ghadiya, said she is baffled by the government’s refusal to her friend into Canada when she saw a news story about an Afghan rescue dog named Alex reunited with his owner, an interpreter from Kabul, now in the country.

“What does it take to get Farzana here? Does she need to dress up as Scooby-Doo to be accepted? We have spoken with so many MPs, there’s been so much attention to her case,” said Craig, whose group has raised money to support a settlement plan for the Afghan woman.

“All we get is a brick wall of rejection. I am up every night worried with fear for my lovely friend, whom I truly feel has become like a daughter to me.”

Meanwhile, Fraser tweeted on Wednesday about another charter flight with 300 Afghan refugees landing in Toronto from Tajikistan, pushing the total number over 20,350 since the special Afghan resettlement programs kicked into gears a year ago.

Source: This Afghan activist is fleeing the Taliban. Canada just rejected her visa request because it didn’t believe she’d go home

Filed under Refugees Tagged with ,

Canada’s immigration minister leaves door open to extending Afghan resettlement programs

2022/09/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

As Canada reaches the halfway point of meeting its commitment to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser says he’s not ruling out lifting the current cap and welcoming more into this country.

But for the moment, he says, his main focus is the 8,500 people to whom Canada has already promised refuge who remain stuck in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

“When we hit that target (and) we have the ability to continue to support all of the people through additional pathways, then we’ll do what we can,” Fraser told the Star in an interview Thursday, on the eve of the arrival of the 20,000th resettled Afghan in Toronto on a charter flight from United Arab Emirates.

“What we have done is made the commitments to the 40,000. But we have not taken a decision never to do more for people from Afghanistan.”

Fraser’s softened tone was in contrast to how his office had previously underlined to media Canada’s commitment to meet the target it announced last October.

In June, the Star reported that Ottawa planned to stop taking in Afghans after it had enough applications to fill the announced spots, despite the fact that many who risked their lives to help the Canadian mission were still waiting for a response to their applications.

“The unfortunate reality is that not everyone who expressed interest in coming to Canada will be eligible. … We are doing everything we can to help Afghans inside and outside of Afghanistan,” Fraser’s press secretary told reporters at the time.

Fraser said there are currently 8,500 Canada-bound Afghans still inside Afghanistan who need to get to another country to complete the resettlement applications and meet requirements such as biometrics and health screening.

These applicants to whom Ottawa has already committed are his top priority and he is working with the international community to find ways to get them out of the country, he said.

He would not reveal the different options officials are investigating.

“I learned through my experience with this effort not to expect a smooth ride. We’re dealing with a territory that’s under the control of a group that’s listed as a terrorist entity in Canadian law. There is very little patience that the Taliban has for people who are eligible to come to Canada,” he explained.

“These 8,500 people who are already in the process are still inside Afghanistan. We are not wavering on our commitment to bring those individuals here. If it was a matter of bringing in any 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada, we could have done that.”

In terms of processing displaced Afghans who are now in a third country waiting to come to Canada, Fraser said the largest groups are in Pakistan and Tajikistan. But many of those are privately sponsored by community groups and their applications may fall outside the special resettlement programs.

This week, the Globe and Mail reported that a Manitoba senator’s office had issued an inauthentic Canadian government document to help facilitate an Afghan family’s travel.

Fraser said an internal investigation confirmed the document — known as “facilitation letter” to help eligible Afghans get through Taliban checkpoints — was inauthentic and that the matter has been referred to law enforcement.

“The integrity of the process has not been compromised because even the authentic letters that we did issue do not permit a person to enter Canada. An individual who used them to move through the airport still has to go through the application process and be issued an invitation to apply and complete the process and other steps required,” he said.

“To our knowledge, no one has been able to use an inauthentic facilitation letter to enter the program, but only to transit to and through the airport.”

Fraser said the Afghan resettlement project has been the most difficult but also rewarding task in his entire life and career as a parliamentarian.

He said it’s humbled him as he’s heard an Afghan woman arriving in Newfoundland saying “she finally has a home”; played soccers with the kids of a group of Afghan human rights defenders in Edmonton; and seen a new arrival kissing the ground of the tarmac in Toronto.

“It’s a great reminder of the lottery of birth that we win as Canadians, by virtue of being born in a country that is safe, where we take for granted that our communities will be peaceful places to grow up,” Fraser said.

“It’s not lost on me that we will have a lot of work ahead of us to make good on our commitment to hit 40,000.”

Source: Canada’s immigration minister leaves door open to extending Afghan resettlement programs

Filed under Refugees Tagged with ,

MP calls for parliamentary probe of inauthentic immigration documents, Afghan resettlement program

2022/09/23 Leave a comment

Of note:

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner is calling for a parliamentary probe into the extent to which inauthentic Canadian government travel documents were used during efforts to rescue people from the Taliban last year, and into the fairness of the government’s resettlement programs for Afghans.

On Wednesday, The Globe and Mail reported that Senator Marilou McPhedran and her staff sent documents to an Afghan family shortly after the Taliban overthrew Afghanistan’s government in August, 2021. The documents, called facilitation letters, said the people named on them had been granted visas to enter Canada. The letters were meant to help those people get through Taliban checkpoints on their way to Kabul’s airport.

But the federal government told The Globe the documents the Senator and her office sent were not authentic, and that the people named on them had not been approved to come to Canada. Authentic facilitation letters were sent only directly by the federal government, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told reporters on Wednesday.

The Immigration Department referred the matter to police. The RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency declined to say whether they had launched investigations.

Ms. McPhedran, whom Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recommended for a Senate appointment in 2016, has defended her actions to The Globe. She has acknowledged using a template version of a government facilitation letter, but she denied that the documents were fake, or that she had used them in an unauthorized way.

She said she had worked around the clock to help vulnerable people get out of Afghanistan during an inadequate federal effort to save Afghans last year. She added that a senior government official had given her the facilitation letter template, and that people within government were aware of her work. Despite repeated requests to the Immigration Department and Global Affairs Canada, the government has refused to say whether any federal officials helped Ms. McPhedran.

Receiving the documents from the Senator and her office left the Afghan family with the mistaken belief that they had been approved to come to Canada. That belief led them to risk their lives attempting to reach the airport, and also delayed their efforts to secure valid visas.

The people who received the documents are family members of one of Ms. Rempel Garner’s constituents. They first reached out to the MP’s office because not everyone in the family had received the documents, and they wanted to know why some had been left out. The group is still in Afghanistan, where they say they are being hunted by the Taliban. To protect their safety, The Globe is not identifying them.

“This case raises a lot of questions about the integrity and the fairness of the initial program,” Ms. Rempel Garner said in an interview with The Globe. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions.”

For example, she said, it remains unclear whether her constituent’s family members were the only ones who received inauthentic documents. And she said it is also unclear how many spaces in Canada’s resettlement programs for vulnerable Afghans were taken by people with such unofficial documents.

Ms. McPhedran did not answer The Globe’s questions about whether she sent similar documents to other people.

The federal government has said no one arrived in Canada using invalid documents, but a government source was unable to say if anyone had successfully used them to get out of Afghanistan. The Globe is not identifying the source because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

In the years before the Taliban takeover, the Canadian government promised Afghans who worked with Canada’s military and diplomatic missions in Afghanistan that they would receive asylum in Canada, because their work with a foreign government put them at risk of Taliban reprisals. But the government didn’t create resettlement programs for Afghans until last year. Its effort to process those immigrants came too late for many, and was unable to meet overwhelming demand.

Tens of thousands of people who had helped NATO in its war in Afghanistan were left behind by Canada and other allied countries. Some are being tortured by the Taliban.

Ms. Rempel Garner spoke to The Globe with the permission of the Afghan family. They had formally applied for resettlement in Canada in the first wave of applications last year, but they later discovered their initial application had been lost.

A letter from Mr. Fraser to Ms. Rempel Garner, which was obtained by The Globe, said the family had not received a valid invitation to apply, despite the fact that they had received an invitation from a government of Canada e-mail address.

A second application, which they made this year, was rejected because Canada’s immigration programs for Afghans had already reached capacity limits set by the government.

In Ottawa on Wednesday, Mr. Fraser said letters that inaccurately purport to be from the government of Canada are a “very serious” matter. He added that he is concerned by any case where vulnerable people “might not be able to rely on documents they have received.”

But Mr. Fraser said he is not concerned that there has been widespread fraud, because the government has not uncovered a significant number of inauthentic documents.

Ms. Rempel Garner said her constituent’s family’s case also raises questions about the overall process that the federal government used to approve or reject resettlement applications from Afghan nationals. She said it’s not clear why her constituent’s family members, who worked for an organization under contract with the Canadian government, didn’t qualify for the immigration programs.

And she said the family’s efforts to escape Afghanistan were not hampered just by the inauthentic documents, but also by long waits for answers from the government about the status of their case. It took almost a year for the government to confirm to Ms. Rempel Garner that the documents the family had received were not authentic.

In 10 years of constituency casework, she said she has never experienced the level of federal government stonewalling that her office dealt with in this case. “Why that happened is something that needs to be examined through Parliament, or the government needs to pro-actively address it, because that really raises concerns about integrity within the immigration system,” she said.

“For this particular family, they’re in a great degree of danger now in Afghanistan. And the government has essentially said there’s not a lot of options to help them.”

NDP MP Jenny Kwan said she was taken aback by the use of inauthentic documents reported by The Globe. She called for more “clarity and investigation.”

Ms. Kwan said the police should make clear whether they are investigating the case. If they are, she said, any parliamentary probe should begin only after the police work is completed.

She also repeated her earlier calls for the government to lift what she said is an arbitrary cap on the number of spots in its immigration programs for Afghan nationals. She said the programs should be expanded so that all Afghans who served Canada can qualify.

“We need to bring them all to safety,” she said.

Source: MP calls for parliamentary probe of inauthentic immigration documents, Afghan resettlement program

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , ,

Documents senator sent to family trapped in Afghanistan weren’t authentic, says federal immigration department

2022/09/22 Leave a comment

Embarrassing for Senator McPhedran but good that IRCC caught the error. And I think the Senator has to be more forthcoming on which “trusted high level Canadian government official” reportedly provided advice.

That being said, understandable that those desperate to leave Afghanistan after its fall to the Taliban would resort to such means:

In the final days of a chaotic and inadequate government effort to rescue people from the Taliban last summer, Senator Marilou McPhedran and one of her staff members sent travel documents to a family attempting to flee Afghanistan. The documents, called facilitation letters, were supposed to help the Afghans bypass checkpoints that had been set up around Kabul’s airport, so they could catch one of the last evacuation flights out of the country.

The letters, copies of which were obtained by The Globe and Mail, have the appearance of official Canadian government documents. They say that each of the Afghans named on them has been “granted a VISA to enter Canada” and ask that the group be given “safe travel to the Hamid Karzai International Airport so that they can board their organized flight.”

A year later, the people who received those documents are still stuck in Afghanistan. And the Canadian government has at last explained why: The facilitation letters they received from the senator and her office were not authentic, and the people named on them had not been approved to come to Canada.

Behind the scenes, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department, had conducted an internal investigation and referred the matter to police.

Ms. McPhedran, a long-time human-rights activist and lawyer, says she was trying to help, and that she acted in good faith. But communications obtained by The Globe show that receiving the documents from her office could have hampered the Afghans’ efforts to escape by giving them the mistaken impression that they had been cleared for travel.

The family had formally applied for resettlement in Canada, but they would later discover their application had been lost. A second application, which they made this year, was rejected because Canada’s immigration programs for Afghans were already at capacity. The group remains at risk in Afghanistan, hunted by the Taliban.

“The use of inauthentic facilitation letters is a serious matter,” IRCC spokesperson Rémi Larivière said in an e-mailed statement. Following the department’s internal investigation, he added, it “made a referral to the appropriate law enforcement partners.”

The RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency declined to say whether they have launched investigations, adding that it is generally their policy not to comment on cases unless charges are laid.

E-mailed statements from IRCC about the matter do not name Ms. McPhedran, but two government sources said the internal investigation was directly related to the documents sent by the senator and her office. The Globe is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

One source said the government is not aware of anyone coming to Canada using the inauthentic documents, but they were unable to say if anyone had successfully used them to get out of Afghanistan.

In an interview, in e-mails to The Globe and in letters sent by her lawyer, Ms. McPhedran defended her efforts to save vulnerable Afghans, who are now subject to the Taliban’s brutal fundamentalist regime. She acknowledged using a template version of a government facilitation letter, but she denied that the documents were fake, or that she had used them in an unauthorized way.

She said the facilitation letter template was sent to her by a “trusted high level Canadian government official,” whom she declined to identify. She also would not say who added the names to the facilitation letters sent by her and her office. And she did not answer a question about whether she knew the Afghans had not been approved for resettlement in Canada.

“There is nothing fraudulent or illicit about any actions I took with regard to the Afghanistan rescue efforts last August,” she said in an e-mail.

”That my good faith efforts to help save Afghan lives are now being mischaracterized as unauthorized or an overreach is a sad commentary about our governance and nothing more than a politically motivated smear campaign.”

Despite repeated requests to IRCC and Global Affairs Canada, the government has refused to say whether any federal officials helped Ms. McPhedran. IRCC’s Mr. Larivière said he would not comment further, to “protect the integrity and privacy of investigations.”

The senator said she had worked around the clock with advocates and non-governmental organizations in August, 2021, as she tried to rescue the people most at risk from hard-line Taliban rule – namely, women and girls. She has spent most of her life fighting for women’s rights. In 1985, she was invested into the Order of Canada for her work ensuring equal rights for women were enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recommended her for a Senate appointment in 2016.

For years before the events of 2021, the Canadian government had promised Afghans who had worked closely with the country’s military and diplomatic missions in Afghanistan that they and their families would be able to resettle in Canada. In 2012, embassy staff in Kabul asked the government to launch a special immigration program for those Afghans. Such a program was finally created in July, 2021, just weeks before the Taliban took over on Aug. 15.

On the same day as the takeover, 10,000 kilometres away from Afghanistan, Mr. Trudeau called a snap election, and the government shuttered its mission in Kabul and evacuated its staff from the city.

The speed of Afghanistan’s fall surprised NATO countries. They were left scrambling to evacuate Afghans whose work with foreign governments put them at risk of Taliban reprisals.

Ms. McPhedran’s lawyer, Matthew Gottlieb, said the senator received the facilitation letter template from a government official on Aug. 25. Flights out of Afghanistan were about to end, and the federal government’s immigration programs for Afghans had buckled under overwhelming demand and a cumbersome application process. Advocates say the eligibility criteria were opaque, and that the process was difficult to navigate in a war zone.

At the time, Kabul’s airport was constantly surrounded by thousands of Afghans hoping to be among the lucky minority allowed to pass through military guards and board flights out. The stakes were so high that some resorted to desperate measures. In at least one instance, parents passed an infant to American soldiers over a barbed wire barricade. In other cases, people tried to cling to the outsides of planes as they took off. On Aug. 26, a suicide bombing at one of the airport’s entrances killed scores of civilians.

Ultimately, tens of thousands of people who had helped NATO in its war in Afghanistan were left behind. Some are being tortured by the Taliban.

Ms. McPhedran told The Globe she acted how anyone would have in a life-or-death situation. She said her efforts “were known by high level government officials.” In some cases, she said, those officials “participated directly in these rescue efforts.” She added that there are e-mails that show people in government knew about her work.

Her lawyer, Mr. Gottlieb, said the senator lacked “the authority or permission” to provide those e-mails.

Mr. Gottlieb added that she “understood, and was told,” that the facilitation letters “could and should be used in assisting Afghans to get to the tarmac” at the Kabul airport.

IRCC’s Mr. Larivière said the government was using facilitation letters in August, 2021, to help ensure Afghans were able to get through security checkpoints on their way to the Kabul airport. But he said authentic documents were sent only by Global Affairs Canada and IRCC, and only through official government e-mail addresses.

Ms. McPhedran and her staff member sent at least two identical e-mails to a recipient of the facilitation letters in Afghanistan. The messages said Ms. McPhedran had learned the person’s name from the New York-based Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, where the senator is a board member. The organization did not reply to questions from The Globe.

The e-mails were brief. They said there was “no guarantee” the attached documents would help. They directed the recipient to a specific gate at the Kabul airport and ended by saying: “Please do not discuss; just present this document first to any Canadian soldier – flights end on the 26th!” The Globe is not naming the recipient of the e-mails or the other people named on the documents to protect their safety in Afghanistan.

The Globe also obtained a letter sent by MP Michelle Rempel Garner, whose constituent’s family members in Afghanistan are the people who received the inauthentic documents.

Ms. Rempel Garner’s letter, dated July 7, was sent to the constituent, as well as Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, Global Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Ms. McPhedran.

The letter detailed almost a year of work that Ms. Rempel Garner’s office had done to help the constituent’s family navigate the immigration system. It said her office at first believed the facilitation letters were legitimate government documents and tried to help the constituent understand why some members of her family had been approved to come to Canada while others had not been.

Over the course of that work, the letter said, Ms. Rempel Garner’s office began to have concerns about the validity of the facilitation letters. Ms. Rempel Garner wrote that, despite 10 months of work and after corresponding with government officials more than 30 times, no one in government had said whether the documents her constituent’s family had received were legitimate.

The letter also said that, because the family had believed they possessed legitimate documents, they had come out of hiding to travel to the airport and exposed themselves to danger.

Mr. Fraser clarified the status of the facilitation letters in a response to Ms. Rempel Garner later in July. He said IRCC did not issue the documents, nor did it have a record of the first of the family’s two resettlement applications.

“Since finding no record of the application, IRCC took steps to understand the nature of the letter you raised and related communication,” Mr. Fraser wrote. “The use of inauthentic facilitation letters is a serious matter, and IRCC has treated the matter with the attention it deserves.”

Source: Documents senator sent to family trapped in Afghanistan weren’t authentic, says federal immigration department

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , , ,

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