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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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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Young refugees offered pop-up classes while awaiting homes | Toronto Star

2016/02/10 Leave a comment

Good initiative:

A string of pop-up classrooms arranged to give young refugees a taste of school while they wait for new homes delighted Syrian families Monday at the west-end Toronto Plaza Hotel.

“A-B-C! — happy!” said a beaming 12-year-old Dalaa al Sarji, who, like most Syrian refugee children arriving in Canada, hadn’t been in a classroom in more than two years.

She and her six siblings — from 3-year-old Hussein to 14-year-old twin brothers — were among some 75 children living temporarily at the Plaza who hopped on school buses Monday in an unusual pilot project to give these uprooted children a feel for the routine of school in satellite classrooms, while they wait to find out where their new homes, and permanent schools, will be.

Hussein al Sarji, 3, is the baby of the family.

LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR

Hussein al Sarji, 3, is the baby of the family.

“We did reading — and the teacher was so pretty,” reported brother Said through an interpreter. Noted 14-year-old Ahmad: “I like school in Canada so much; everyone makes us welcome.”

Concerned that housing delays were leaving refugee children with no way to start integrating into Canada — the average hotel stay has been about four weeks — Toronto’s public and Catholic school boards scrambled together last week to find empty classrooms and hire supply teachers and Arabic interpreters to run two-hour morning classes for children while they’re living at the hotel. The costs, including buses, will be covered by the province’s newcomer program.

Walaa al Sarji, 6, can’t wait to play football and hockey in school.

“It’s the right thing to do; you can’t promise people a new life and not prepare them for getting an education,” said Karen Falconer, the Toronto District School Board’s executive superintendent of Continuing and International Education.

Some 265 refugee children are living at the hotel at the moment. Only 75 took part in the morning programs Monday, although twice as many have signed up for Tuesday.

Ahmad al Sarji, 14, feels more welcome here compared to the school experiece in Lebanon.

“I understand why many of these parents aren’t comfortable at first with the idea of putting their kids on a school bus and letting them go,” said Falconer. “We have to build trust.”

Source: Young refugees offered pop-up classes while awaiting homes | Toronto Star

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What distinguishes the Syrians arriving in Canada from those in Europe? – The Globe and Mail

2016/02/08 Leave a comment

Good analysis by Mark McKinnon:

Statistics compiled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees show 57 per cent of the just over one million people who have arrived on the islands of either Greece or Italy since the start of last year were adult males, versus 17 per cent women and 27 per cent children. Strip out the under 18s, and 77 per cent of the adults who made “irregular entries” to Europe were men (compared with 66 per cent in 2012, before the refugee crisis began in earnest).

Those numbers come with unpredictable consequences. In Sweden, the country that has received the highest per capita number of asylum applications, The Economist magazine forecast that the country’s gender ratio would tip from 105 to 107 men per 100 women if all the new arrivals were allowed to stay. Among 14- to 17-year-olds – where new arrivals are overwhelmingly male – the figure would rise from 106 to 116 per 100 women. A country that stands as a world leader in gender equality may soon have an imbalance similar to China’s.

Canada, in contrast, will have very different, but equally challenging, integration issues. The bulk of the 25,000 Syrians that the government and private sponsors are in the midst of resettling have almost nothing in common with the refugee population arriving in Europe.

Europe is chaotically receiving the youthful cream of the crop. Canada, by relying on the UNHCR to lead its selection process, is receiving Syria’s poorest and most vulnerable. Where Europe is receiving too many young men, most of those Canada is resettling are families, often with female heads of households, the men often having died in the war.

I’ve interviewed large numbers from both refugee pools. Those I’ve met waiting on the beaches of Turkey hoping to cross to Greece, or walking through the Balkans as they broke borders on their way north, have been predominantly men. But while that was unsettling – where were the women and children? – many had impressive skill sets. I’ve met refugees who were lawyers, engineers and university professors back home before the wars.

Languages were another asset. If I was speaking to a group of six or seven Syrians, Afghans or Iraqis, at least one or two of the group usually spoke some English. I’ve met asylum-seekers who spoke French and German too.

The 25,000 refugees Canada is importing contrast with Europe’s new arrivals in almost every way. Generally speaking, they were the most economically vulnerable of the Syrian refugees living in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon because they hadn’t been affluent before the war either. It’s simple math: Those who were poor in pre-war Syria ran through their savings before rich refugees did.

As international aid dwindled – last year the world funded just 40 per cent of an $8.4-billion United Nations appeal for Syria – they were the ones who suffered most from declining food stipends and dwindling school spaces. They were the ones who couldn’t even contemplate paying a smuggler thousands of dollars to take them to Europe.

They were Syria’s olive farmers and shopkeepers before the war, not its university graduates. Of the dozens of refugees headed to Canada that I met (and I was focused on the government-selected pool, rather than private sponsorships), I can remember only one who spoke passable English.

Many of their kids, worryingly, had been out of school for years.

Our challenge, then, will be completely different than Europe’s. Don’t look to Cologne and shudder. Look instead to the alienated suburbs of Paris and Brussels, where the children of Muslim immigrants were allowed to grow up as angry outsiders within French and Belgian society. Look to Canada’s own native reserves, where a community that started behind was allowed to fall even further behind.

Source: What distinguishes the Syrians arriving in Canada from those in Europe? – The Globe and Mail

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Needs of some Syrian refugees higher than expected, analysis finds

2016/02/04 Leave a comment

While this data is not totally surprising, it does highlight the integration challenges being faced by some refugees:

While the report says the government doesn’t foresee the need for widespread changes to existing programs, here’s a look at what it found, and some of the implications for resettlement providers.

  • Government-assisted refugees have bigger families: 53 per cent of approved cases listed five to eight people on the application, compared with seven per cent of privately sponsored cases. This highlights the current housing crunch — it’s harder to find apartments to accommodate that many people within available budgets.
  • They’re younger: 55 per cent of approved applicants were 14 years of age or younger, compared with 27 per cent of privately sponsored ones. The report notes that services directly targeted at children will need to be stepped up and the report notes they’ve often only gone to school in Arabic.
  • They speak little English or French: 67 per cent of approved applicants reporting speaking neither language, compared with 37 per cent of privately sponsored ones. Resettlement agencies have previously highlighted that in some cities, wait lists for language training are over a year long.
  • How much education they have is unclear: The analysis says anecdotal reports suggest the average level of schooling for adult Syrian government-assisted refugees is six to nine years. Of cases coming from Jordan, 90 to 95 per cent have not finished high school. The report notes that many kids are also a year or two behind their peers, putting new demands on the school system.
  • Their most recent jobs may not reflect their skills: Many refugees can’t legally work in their host countries, and often find general labour jobs. “Anecdotally, reports from visa officers abroad indicate that work experience is largely low-skilled and almost entirely limited to males,” the analysis said.
  • They are generally healthy: The brief says the health of refugees runs from entirely health to those with severe diseases such as cancer. But only 12 per cent of the medical assessments had at least one condition listed. The most common were hypertension, diabetes and vision or hearing impairment. “While mental-health issues were not identified as one of the most frequent conditions at the time of the (medical exam), it is a condition that can arise soon or several months after arrival in Canada,” the brief says.

The data shows that 15,157 Syrians landed between Nov. 4 last year and Jan. 31 this year. Of these, 8,767 were government-assisted, 5,341 were privately sponsored and 1,049 are part of a program that combines the two.

Source: Needs of some Syrian refugees higher than expected, analysis finds – The Globe and Mail

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The right way to settle refugees: Dench and Douglas

2016/02/02 Leave a comment

Janet Dench and Debbie Douglas on supporting the government’s decision not to convert government-assisted refugees into privately-sponsored refugees:

We are fortunate to be in a situation in Canada where so many citizens want to sponsor refugees. This current reality is almost beyond the most optimistic dreams of refugee advocates just six months ago. It is important that this energy be harnessed, to provide solutions for as many refugees as possible and to reinvigorate a private sponsorship program that has been in decline recently, weighed down by barriers and delays.

The sudden emergence of so many would-be sponsors has also created challenges, as the structures are not in place to orient and support them, nor are there adequate mechanisms ready to connect them with refugees in need of sponsorship. Experienced private sponsors, settlement agencies, members of the Syrian Canadian community and government officials have been working day and night for months now to respond to these new sponsors. The Syrian Family Links initiative, announced last week by the federal government, fills a gap by connecting sponsors with Syrian refugees who have family in Canada. It should be noted, however, that this role is already being played effectively by settlement agencies and private sponsorship groups in many regions of the country. The private sponsorship route is well-adapted to supporting people in Canada trying to reunite with their families overseas caught in dire situations and in need of protection.

If sponsors take over responsibility for government-sponsored refugees already here, that may very well result in the abandonment of refugees with family in Canada.

We must also remember that there are other refugee populations whose needs for protection are just as great. They should not be forgotten in the focus on the Syrian refugee crisis.

Source: The right way to settle refugees – The Globe and Mail

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Conservatives didn’t cherry-pick religious minority refugees: Alexander

2016/02/01 Leave a comment

Valid defence of the policy but the documents suggest a more interventionist approach. Alexander, in the article, is silent about the tiny numbers admitted (which suggest more ‘cherry picking’ – see Conservatives cherry picked certain Syrian refugee files: documents).

More interesting, he does not comment on the implications of the PMO audit: that PMO did not trust Alexander, CIC, or PCO to ensure that the policy direction of preference for religious minorities was being implemented, and what would likely be unprecedented PMO involvement in a refugee file .

When I worked in PCO, the normal way PMO would ‘manage’ what was considered a problematic file (one that departments were not managing well), was through PCO, not directly:

Former immigration minister Chris Alexander is defending his government’s approach to resettling Syrian refugees, denying that the Conservatives cherry-picked cases by prioritizing religious and ethnic minorities.

Every country working with the United Nations refugee agency on the humanitarian crisis in Syria operated under agreed-upon criteria for how to decide which refugees they’d accept, Alexander said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The basic principle was to focus on the most vulnerable, but additional priorities had to be applied, Alexander said.

“To determine who was the most needy, who is the most vulnerable among four million people, you need to set some priorities,” he said.

“And that’s what the Syria core group has done from the beginning and that’s what Canada’s operation to resettle Syrian refugees has striven to do.”

Alexander, who lost his Toronto-area seat in last fall’s election, was at the helm of the Immigration portfolio when the Conservatives announced last January they would increase the number of refugees accepted by Canada from 1,300 to 10,000.

But they also announced they would concentrate on bringing in members of religious and ethnic minorities, prompting accusations of an anti-Muslim bias and charges that the government was violating UN rules.

Most religious minorities in the region are from Christian groups. The UN also specifically asks countries not to use religion as a factor in determining who to take in.

‘Areas of focus’

How exactly the Conservatives applied their approach was made clear this week via documents tabled in the House of Commons in response to a question from the NDP.

In them, the Immigration department said visa officers working in Lebanon and Jordan pulled cases that met the “areas of focus” criteria and processed those on a priority basis, while others were processed on regular timelines.

‘The principle we respected all along was humanitarian need. There were a variety of priorities under that heading’ – Former immigration minister Chris Alexander

Alexander said religion and ethnic status were not the sole area of focus and that they were working from a set of principles agreed upon by resettlement states.

A document he provided outlining those principles makes no mention of religion or ethnicity, but Alexander said they were understood to be part of a category described as people “belonging to a group for whom the authorities are unable to provide protection.”

He also pointed to another document, available on the website of the British arm of the UN refugee agency.

“Refugees who face serious threats to their physical security, particularly due to political opinion or belonging to an ethnic or religious minority group, may also be prioritized,” the document states.

In prioritizing religious minorities, the Conservatives were not picking a single faith, Alexander noted.

But applying that lens to the program reflected the nature of the conflict, which includes Islamic militants targeting Christian minorities or the Assad regime in Syria going after Sunni Muslims.

“This is the way this conflict is unfolding and those groups who face persecution because of their faith, or their ethnicity or their political views deserve special forms of protection,” he said.

Source: Conservatives didn’t cherry-pick religious minority refugees: Alexander – Politics – CBC News

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Conservatives cherry picked certain Syrian refugee files: documents

2016/01/29 1 Comment

Not one of the previous government’s finest hours, even if a case could be made to prefer those from threatened minority communities:

Newly released government documents paint the clearest picture to date of how the Conservative government’s controversial approach to Syrian refugee resettlement played out last year.

Before last winter, the previous government had only committed to take in 1,300 Syrian refugees from the millions fleeing the civil war there and spilling into surrounding countries.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper had been under intense pressure — including from inside his own cabinet — to increase that total, but only agreed to accept a further 10,000 provided that religious and ethnic minorities were prioritized.

The policy, unveiled last January, was contentious. The vast majority of the Syrian refugee population is Muslim. The decision to hone in on “religious minorities” prompted allegations the government was biased against Muslims and was also violating United Nations principles governing refugee resettlement.

The refugees the Canadian government accepts for resettlement are chosen by the UN. They do not use ethnicity or religion as a basis for determining whether someone requires resettlement to a third country.

But documents tabled in the House of Commons this week in response to a question from the NDP show how the Conservatives found a workaround.

In February 2015, visa officers in Jordan and Lebanon were instructed to track “areas of focus” for Syrian refugees, which included tracking whether someone was a member of a vulnerable ethnic or religious minority, the documents say.

They applied that criteria to the files they were receiving from the UN.

“Cases meeting at least one of the areas of focus were identified for expedited processing,” the documents say. “Cases that did not meet the areas of focus were included in the mission’s inventory and processed as a regular case.”

The tracking stopped in November 2015.

The Citizenship and Immigration department, asked repeatedly in recent months for a breakdown of Syrian refugees by religion, has consistently said it does not track that information.

On Wednesday, however, spokesperson Jessica Seguin said while the department applied the areas-of-focus approach, it never recorded how many cases met those criteria in part because the computer system isn’t set up that way.

“It is true that for a short time this information was anecdotally tracked in a few missions, but it was never done systematically,” Seguin said in an e-mail.

“No refugees were screened out of the resettlement process as a result of the areas of focus.”

The documents also illustrate the impact of another controversial Conservative move last year — auditing government-assisted refugee case files to see whether they were in keeping with the areas of focus and security requirements.

According to the data tabled in the House of Commons, in June 2015, the highest number of government-assisted refugees admitted to Canada so far that year was 62. That same month, Harper ordered the audit.

The following month, admissions fell to just 9 people.

Source: Conservatives cherry picked certain Syrian refugee files: documents

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Educators have a superficial understanding of multiculturalism: expert Anna Kirova

2016/01/26 Leave a comment

I expect this varies depending on the community and school board. Toronto District School Board, for example, seems to have a good integration track record, and readers will undoubtedly have other examples, either good or less so:

Soon, thousands of Syrian refugees will call Canada home. Along with frigid winters, and a lack of knowledge in the English language, they will also face a cultural shift. So how do we make children refugees more comfortable in our classrooms?

“It’s an interesting question how we, after more than 40 years of multiculturalism, all of a sudden now begin to talk about these issues,” said Kirova, whose research has focused on developing an inter-cultural early learning  program for immigrant and refugee children, including understanding how newcomer children experience loneliness and isolation in school. “It’s overdue.”

“We have, what we call in our field in education, a very superficial understanding of multiculturalism,” Kirova said, as she commented on the multiculturalism policies that are currently in place in Canadian classrooms.

Kirova’s research has been highly critical of the interpretation of multicultural policies in classrooms, and that the idea that multiculturalism is about much more than having a couple of books in a variety of languages, a doll of a different race, or hosting days focused on the food and entertainment of a culture, it’s about making children feel more comfortable, and tapping into the vast knowledge from their past.

“We’ve been very good in identifying what they can not do. What we haven’t really been good about is to identify what they can do.”

Kirova suggests focusing on their resourcefulness, strength and resiliency, as opposed to their lack of communication skills, knowledge of school routines and ability to pay attention in class.

“Many children have never held a pen or a pencil and this is one of the ways we assess children’s knowledge and skills,” Kirova said. “We need people from the communities to help us understand what is best for children when they come to the class.”

Source: Educators have a superficial understanding of multiculturalism: expert | Globalnews.ca

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Wise counsel for first-time refugee sponsors: Goar

2016/01/23 Leave a comment

Carol Goar on the messages coming from a meeting on “Faith Groups and Syrian Refugees” hosted by the Intercultural Dialogue Institute, in partnership with the Canadian Association of Jews and Muslims:

Most of them [attendees] were first-time refugee sponsors. They looked to Mary Jo Leddy, who has been welcoming asylum-seekers at Romero House for 25 years, for guidance, tips and suggestions.

But she surprised them. Instead of providing an inventory of “dos” and “don’ts,” pre-arrival preparations and cultural pointers, she told them not to plan so hard; worry so much; or focus so intently on what lies down the road. “As you take the first step, the second step will become clearer.”

She urged them to celebrate the “remarkable moment we’re living through” and rejoice in the rare willingness of Canadians to make time in their harried lives to care for desperate strangers. “I’ve never experienced anything like this. We’re drowning in a sea of kindness at Romero House.”

She congratulated them on leading by example. “As members of faith communities you can encourage others to act even though they don’t think they’re ready. These refugees are summoning us to act together for the sake of others.”

And she told them not to be cowed by presumed experts. “For many refugees therapy is useless. What they need to heal is an opportunity to contribute, get involved in a parents’ group or play in a band. One day the universe will turn upside down and they’ll say: I could really like it here.”

Source: Wise counsel for first-time refugee sponsors: Goar | Toronto Star

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