No Room at Canada’s Inn for Afghan Refugees

 

With all the experience of Canada’s remarkable network of grass roots groups, community organizations, sponsorship agreement holders, and refugee advocates, IRCC has played its cards close to its chest, shutting out many expert individuals and networks who could facilitate this process. IRCC also keeps repeating that the unavailability of flights out of Kabul and an alleged lack of capacity among “referral partners” are primary reasons for delay, but those excuses mask the reality that there is plenty of space to get this rescue operation expedited. 

 

 

By Matthew Behrens

            It’s been 47 years since Toronto Workshop Productions opened a Jack Winter play about the impossible barriers facing Chilean refugees trying to escape the Pinochet dictatorship and get to Canada. The play’s title, You Can’t Get There From Here, might well apply a half century later to the tens of thousands of Afghans hiding out from the Taliban, languishing in unsafe third countries, and wondering if they have been gaslit by a Canadian government that promised safety and asylum, but which only provides auto-generated emails acknowledging receipt of their increasingly desperate inquiries.

            In 2015, when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals ran on a platform to rapidly welcome thousands of Syrian refugees (contrasting itself with the mean-spirited Harper regime), they initiated a program to land 25,000 people in 100 days. Back then, it was sunny ways and the anti-Harper. But Trudeau’s 2021 election promise to offer asylum to 40,000 Afghans felt more like a rearguard motion to cover for Canada’s 12-year failure to provide safe haven for interpreters, translators, fixers, and others whose lives remain at risk because of their past association with the Canadian occupation.

            In fact, 130 days after the first announced commitment to resettle Afghan refugees who had assisted Canada during the occupation, fewer than 10% of them have arrived in Canada. There are two dozen people from the Canadian embassy’s law firm in Kabul who remain stranded there as well.

Many grass roots groups, sponsorship organizations, and lawyers daily receive new emails pleading for help. Most are from individuals who meet the qualifications for Canada’s program to assist women’s rights defenders, human rights organizers, persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and journalists. The plea  is always the same: must they die waiting even when they clearly meet the requirements?

 

Killed Waiting for Canada’s Help

            Canada’s sick answer to that painful question, unfortunately, is yes. On the evening of December 10 – International Human Rights Day – a 10-year-old girl named Nazifa, whose family had been approved for resettlement to Canada, was shot dead in Kandahar. A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister Sean Fraser called this death “tragic and heartbreaking.” While Fraser himself added that the killing would “shock the conscience of every Canadian,” both failed to take any responsibility for it, or to acknowledge that it was painfully predictable.

Kynan Walper, a spokesperson for a group of Canadian veterans and interpreters, Aman Lara (Pashto for “sheltered path”), told Global News, “There was a 10-year-old girl who was shot … when she should have been on her way to Canada. This was avoidable and it was bound to happen, and it’s going to happen more. We need to do better, and I understand that everyone’s trying, but we need to do better, we need to pick this up…whether it be through flights, whether it be through ground movements, whether it be through co-operation with other countries, we need to continue this with a renewed urgency so this does not happen again.”

To make matters worse, Minister Fraser’s racist rants about the Taliban are not endearing Canadian officials to the new regime in Afghanistan. Tragically, the Taliban are the only game in town, but name-calling and insults will only harm those refugees trying to leave the country on their way to Canada. “If [the Taliban] wanted to help us, which they don’t, I don’t think they’d be very good at it,” Fraser fulminated.

While the Taliban’s practices and violence are certainly vile, they are hardly an unsophisticated, unorganized group who are incapable of negotiation and cutting agreements. They sat in lengthy negotiations with the Trump administration in Doha, and President Joe Biden repeatedly declared in an August 20, 2021 press conference that his administration was in constant contact with Taliban officials, and that they had struck agreements to allow evacuation flights. And just last weekend, the Taliban announced they would resume the issuance of travel documents. But Canada’s belligerent rhetoric is hardly opening a door to the kinds of agreements this country is capable of striking if there is the political will to do so. (Indeed, when two white male Canadian diplomats were held hostage by Al-Qaeda in 2009, Canada appeared to have no problems negotiating a $1.1 million ransom.)

 

Grass Roots Groups Shut Out

But what should really shock the conscience of Canadians is that Fraser’s own IRCC is not “very good at it” when it comes to answering the pleas of Afghan refugees. With all the experience of Canada’s remarkable network of grass roots groups, community organizations, sponsorship agreement holders, and refugee advocates, IRCC has played its cards close to its chest, shutting out many expert individuals and networks who could facilitate this process. IRCC also keeps repeating that the unavailability of flights out of Kabul and an alleged lack of capacity among “referral partners” are primary reasons for delay, but those excuses mask the reality that there is plenty of space to get this rescue operation expedited.

Indeed, on December 7, NDP Immigration critic Jenny Kwan called for emergency immigration measures in the House of Commons, pointing out, “According to the government’s own website, ‘Canada and its allies have received assurances from the Taliban that Afghan citizens with travel authorization from other countries will be allowed to leave Afghanistan.’ Canada must not squander this small window of opportunity given the dire situation in Afghanistan. The NDP is therefore calling on the government to bring in an emergency immigration measure of utilizing temporary residence permits to help Afghans get to safety.”          

The Rural Refugee Rights Network (the author coordinates the group), which has successfully reunited dozens of refugee families using such permits, has heard from scores of Afghans both within and outside of the country. They range from women’s rights activists to the long-persecuted members of the Hazara ethnic group and former non-governmental organization (NGO) workers. As a potential “referral partner,” the network has plenty of complete files with everything needed to expedite temporary resident permits.

But Ottawa is not returning phone calls or emails. For groups like the long-established Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, the experience is similar. Their executive director, Lauryn Oates, told the Globe and Mail, “Even just communicate, send a reply that says: Look, we’re gonna do our best to give you an answer by the end of December, so people have something. It seems to be a failure of bureaucracy and an inability to adapt to an emergency … the needs of human beings who are real people with real families who just want to know what the hell is going to happen to them.”

 

“Why Can’t You Prioritize Us?”

One of the families working with the Rural Refugee Rights Network submitted all required information to the Canadian government last August. Well-trained in finance and administration and a father of three young kids, “Hussain” worked for almost a decade with a variety of Canadian-funded organizations that provided mentoring and research to assist policewomen, War Child Canada’s Evaluation of Afghan Women’s Community Support Program, the Aga Khan Foundation, the United Nations Development Program, World University Service of Canada, and the Canadian International Development Agency.

When I spoke with Hussain last week, he expressed disappointment that his family remains stuck in a crowded Netherlands refugee camp as he continues to spend hours on the IRCC website and make phone calls to the Afghanistan hotline. He is equally distressed that he has not received any support from the NGOs for which he risked his life working for close to a decade, with one representative unhelpfully replying that Hussain should to try engage with the unresponsive IRCC.

Despite the barriers put up both by government and the NGO world, Hussain remains hopeful that, by sharing his story, families like his and many others in limbo will receive enough support from grass roots people across Canada that Ottawa will finally speed up what should be an easy process to finalize.

“I lost everything because of what happened, and now we are stuck here,” he told me. “I’m young, I can work, I won’t be dependent on anyone. The scope of my work experience is wide. Why can’t you prioritize us?”

Hussain has seen other families suddenly getting the word that they could get on a plane, but he has received no answer as to why his application, which meets all the requirements for quick entry to Canada, sits idle. He worries because his kids are losing weight –  there is no culturally appropriate food made available to them – and he knows of some refugees who have waited in the camps for as long as 8 years to get housing in the Netherlands.

“Canada has everything they need to know all about us,” Hussain says. “We have so much to contribute. We are in the Netherlands. There are not the security issues we saw at the Kabul airport that would prevent us from getting on a plane. We are fully vaxxed, we are ready to be relocated. What is holding things up?”

On top of the stress of limbo, Hussain and his family also have traumatic memories of the scramble to leave the country, which entailed a nail-biting, last-minute dash to the airport, tense negotiation while standing knee-deep in the sewage ditch surrounding the Kabul airport, and trying to calm his children by explaining that the roar of military jets and sounds of gun and mortar fire were wedding celebrations.

 

We Never Slept Well

Like many in his shoes, Hussain was at constant risk from the Taliban, even during the Canadian and NATO occupation, for engaging in NGO work. Indeed, in 2017 he received a notorious Taliban “night letter” (a form of intimidation that threatens the recipient for working with “the crusaders”), which forced his family to relocate. “They told me they knew I was working with non-governmental organizations, that I was dealing with money,” he said, noting this left him open to threats of extortion and violence. As the Taliban entered Kabul, he destroyed the letter, knowing he was doomed if he were captured with it on his person. Even before the dramatic events of August 2021, living in the country was always fraught with tension. “Many people were targeted for killing, and we never slept well,” he recalled. “Every day I thought, this is our last day, and yes, the fear was always there.” 

While Afghan families both inside and outside of Afghanistan express their frustration, there is a long line-up of professionals and volunteers alike on the other end of the equation wanting to facilitate the process but continuing to hit brick walls.

“I was looking forward to being part of various Afghanistan pro bono initiatives that dedicated volunteers have organized, in an effort to use my legal knowledge to help vulnerable populations seek refuge in our country,” explains immigration lawyer Sheela Gupta. “Unfortunately, my skill set, along with those of other lawyers who are driven to help in whatever way they can, are not being used. My efforts mainly consist of responding to desperate pleas from Afghans, received on a daily basis. I have a boilerplate response which I use more often than I'd like, that explains their ineligibility for government programs and expresses the hope that additional resettlement programs may be introduced in the future.”

            Even when her clients match the requirements for Canada’s Afghan refugee program, Gupta notes that “there are inconsistencies in how applications are accepted for processing. …I've lost hope on additional resettlement programs being introduced anytime soon, but I do hope that IRCC is instructed to process applications in queue more expeditiously, especially given that so many applicants are in hiding from the Taliban or are in other countries without legal status.”

 

Canada’s Anti-Migrant Bias

            Part of the problem is that Canada employs twice as many people on the enforcement end of immigration – working to deport the most vulnerable back to the countries they fled ­– than it does to facilitate their entry.   Indeed, some 14,000 people work day and night at Canadian Border Services Agency to meet arbitrary deportation quotas, throw refugees into prison on the flimsiest of grounds (in 2019/20, over 8,800 refugees were detained without charge, including 136 children), and work overseas to prevent migrants from getting here in the first place. By contrast, IRCC has just over 7,000 workers, many of whom tend to play a role similar to CBSA, finding excuses to delay or reject applications in a work environment that its own employees say is rank with racism.

A 2020 report on IRCC’s work culture found that “significant proportions of racialized employees consider racism to be a problem within the department,” pointing to hurtful comments, “blatantly racist tropes,” and “racial biases in the application of IRCC’s programs, policies and client service that are believed to result from implicit biases among decision makers, as well as administrative practices that introduce biases or the potential for bias over time.” These focus groups also pointed to “a deep imbalance in racial representation in management that inherently militates against progress on dealing with racism in the department.”

            That racism is often exhibited in the very overseas visa posts that are apparently tasked with the Afghan refugee crisis. As one participant noted in the focus group, they “decided not to accept any postings to countries in the region their ancestors came from, as the emotional toll of being exposed repeatedly to racist comments against people of their background had become too heavy.”

            Critically for Afghan applicants suffering the endless wait under trying conditions, the report also found “some of the overt and subtle racism [IRCC employees] have witnessed by both employees and decision makers can and probably must impact case processing. Some point to differences in refusal rates by country as an indicator that some form of bias must be at play.”

In addition, the report found that established practices meant to reflect departmental policies “have taken on discriminatory undertones for the sake of expediency or performance,” pointing to discriminatory rules for processing immigration applications from some countries or regions that are different than for others (e.g., demanding additional financial document requirements for applications from Nigeria). They also expressed concern that increased automation of processing “will embed racially discriminatory practices in a way that will be harder to see over time.”

 

No Room at the Inn

            The self-advocacy group Voices 4 Families has recently pointed to examples in rejections for spousal sponsorships as rooted in that very racism, noting that, among other factors, explanations for turning down a spouse can include a woman who is older than her husband, the woman is a divorcee, a woman who is not white is married to a white man, the wedding size was small, the couple have mixed religious backgrounds, and because the couple have different levels of education.

            When Trudeau first came to power, his government blamed everything wrong with the immigration system on Harper. That excuse, while certainly justified, could only last so long (notably, much of the damage was also done during the Chretien/Martin years too). Then along came Covid, a catch-all excuse to further rationalize unacceptable processing delays, even though the processing of immigration files can be done online from any location on the planet. Now, families who have been waiting years for reunification are told the Afghan refugee crisis has taken up all the priority staff time. But with such poor numbers of resettled Afghan refugees, many wonder if that too is just another excuse to cover an institutional failure.

            IRCC Minister Fraser, meanwhile, is playing by the classic Trudeau script, acknowledging the pain he feels while refusing to come up with immediate, bold, and perfectly realizable solutions. When asked by the Globe and Mail if he appreciates that lives are on the line, Fraser replied: “That’s the kind of thing that you think about when you go to bed at night and you ask yourself, ‘Am I bringing the level of dedication and talent to this job that the magnitude of the task demands?’ And I hope to God I do.”

While heavenly judgment has yet to be rendered for Fraser, the verdict has long been posted in every auto-generated letter from Canadian immigration authorities to fearful Afghans wondering whether that invitation to come to Canada was all just a cruel joke. In the spirit of the season, it clearly tells them: No Room at the Inn.

 

December 7: Santa Claus Joins Somali Refugee to Plead with Trudeau to End 25-Month Separation from 3-Year-old Daughter;

 On Tuesday, December 7 at 11 am, Somali refugee Nasro Adan Mohamed arrives from Brockville, Ontario at the Prime Minister’s Office (Wellington and Elgin entrance) with a very special request. Along with friends and supporters, including the most famous resident of the North Pole and NDP Immigration critic Jenny Kwan, Nasro will attempt to present a petition with almost 13,000 signatures calling for a special permit to reunify Nasro with her 3-year-old overseas daughter, Afnaan, and husband, Liiban.

"Please Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Fraser – please grant my family the permits we need so that we can be a family again!” Mohamed says. "My daughter was a baby when I left and now she’s become a little girl. I need my husband and my daughter and they need me.” 

 

"Situations like Nasro's are all too common in the Somali community,” says Rukia Warsame, who has worked as a settlement counsellor for over 20 years with Somali Centre for Family Services. "We have been dealing with the heartbreaking stories of mothers separated from children even weeks old babies since early 1990s. In fact I have 2 cases that are the same as Nasro's that have been going on for over 10 years now. Both are a result of the same bad advice that Nasro has received. Listening to those mothers was difficult. But hopefully the door will open wide enough for Nasro and these families to be reunited.” 

 

Nasro’s family have been apart for over 25 months due to the all-too-common snags and complications involved in immigrating to Canada, barriers that are even more challenging when one’s first language is neither English nor French. Nasro, a refugee from terrorist violence in Somalia that claimed her father and brothers in a 2013 bomb attack, fled to Uganda, where she met her future husband Liiban (also a refugee from terrorist violence) and gave birth to Afnaan in early 2019. 

 

Nasro, who only had 3 years of formal education in Somalia, says she never received an explanation about how Canadian sponsorships work and, as a result, relied on the poor advice of fellow refugees in Uganda who told her not to list her husband and baby girl on the sponsorship paperwork. They claimed it would slow down her own application, and she was further led to believe her husband and daughter would be able to follow her to Canada within weeks of her arrival. This kind of poor advice is, sadly, often shared amongst fellow fearful refugees in difficult environments where there are no informed advocates available to facilitate such applications.

Upon her arrival in Canada in 2019, Nasro immediately informed border officers about her family back in Uganda and, once her sponsorship group found out, they quickly took action to bring the family together. Despite being approved for the sponsorship of her husband and baby girl in January 2020, the wheels have ground to a halt on the process. The only communication they’ve seen from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) was an email that callously dismissed the concerns about the 2+ years of separation with the complacent rationalization that “Processing times for this category of application of permanent residence, those applying from Uganda, are 34 months. As such, the application is within published timelines.”

 

That response infuriated Rev. Marianne Emig Carr of Brockville’s First Presbyterian Church which, along with Brockville Freedom Connection, sponsored both Nasro as well as her family. “It is unacceptable that a government so committed on paper to family reunification has failed to bring life to that promise for thousands of separated immigrant and refugee families like Nasro’s,” she says. “The Liberals campaigned on special visas to allow families like Nasro’s to reunite during the processing of their applications, and there is no better place to start than with this case. Saying it’s OK not to move urgently on Nasro’s case simply because the average processing time is 34 months is to condemn her family and others in their shoes to the incredible emotional trauma that comes with this kind of long-distance, long-term family separation.”

 

In partnership with the Rural Refugee Rights Network, First Presbyterian Church and Brockville Freedom Connection put together an application for an Early Admission Temporary Resident Permit (TRP) to allow Afnaan and her father to come and live in Canada until their sponsorship paperwork is finalized.

 

“That’s the same process we went through after my family had been separated for over 2 years,” explains Ottawa Palestinian refugee Jihan Qunoo, who took to the airwaves and the PMO last May to demand the immediate reunification of her own war-traumatized family, a permit she won two weeks after submitting it. Qunoo, who will join the Tuesday rally, notes that since her family won approval in June, 2021, a dozen similarly long-separated families from Gaza have also won those permits. 

 

“What that tells us is that if public awareness and political pressure are brought to bear, the government seems to finally move on these cases,” says Matthew Behrens of the Rural Refugee Rights Network. “So with the support of Santa Claus and thousands of people across this country, we hope the message will be loud and clear on December 7. If you value children’s and family rights, then you will issue the permit immediately and allow this family to be whole again.”

 

Behrens notes that his group has facilitated dozens of such permits, including for a 4-year-old boy in 2015, Daksh Sood, whose Ottawa parents’ case mirrored Nasro’s. “We’ve also seen such permits issued to a non-status BC teenager who wanted to attend the little league world series in Pennsylvania. So if we can issue a permit for a boy to play on his field of dreams, surely we can do the same for a family like Nasro’s.” 

 

Until then, Nasro keeps in touch on a weekly basis with her daughter and husband via WhatsApp. 

 

“Nasro is suffering physical and psychological effects from the separation,” explains Nancy Cassie of Brockville Freedom Connection, a close friend of the family. “The depression and anxiety with which she is dealing often leads to flare-ups with her ulcers, headaches, and poor sleep. She constantly worries about Liiban and Afnaan’s safety, especially after the terrorist bombing last month in Kampala. She speaks of the helplessness that she feels when her husband or baby gets sick or hurt.”

 

Cassie says Nasro’s case is a perfect example of the harm that hurts not only individual families, but also Canadian society at large. “Because her husband is a de facto single parent who must take care of Afnaan, they have to rely on Nasro’s overtime wages to survive. Because Nasro has to work such long hours to support them overseas, she has had to stop her English as a Second Language courses and put on hold her nursing education. You can see how this spiral ultimately prevents our society from having one more urgently needed nurse, exactly what we need in the midst of so many health crises. Bring the family together and the process of resettlement and integration will help not only them but our community as well.”

 

“Canada has an obligation to adhere to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and handle family reunification applications 'in a positive, humane and expeditious manner.' It is imperative that the Minister act quickly to provide Nasro's family with TRPs, and further act to set a 6-month maximum processing standard for the reunification of children of refugees,” said Jenny Kwan, NDP Critic for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

 

For more information, and to interview Rev. Carr, Nancy Cassie, and Nasro Adan Mohamed, contact Matthew Behrens of the Rural Refugee Rights Network at (613) 300-9536.  

 

The Syrian Refugees That Time – and Canada – Forgot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Syrian boy is afraid to turn 18, because that’s when the murderous Assad regime will come to claim him for its blood-stained military. His refusal to be forcibly conscripted into an atrocities-tainted army will mark him for jail, torture or death. With most of his family in Canada –including a father who is awaiting adjudication of his own refugee claim – he needs an urgent Temporary Resident Permit to escape a regime condemned by Canada for its “brutal and shocking attacks on its own people.” 

By Matthew Behrens

            The lethal crisis of closed borders and xenophobic immigration policies made an increasingly rare media appearance last week with the drowning deaths of 27 desperate refugees attempting to cross the English Channel. Since 2014, at least 166 asylum seekers have lost their lives making that perilous journey; almost 23,000 have been killed or reported missing crossing the Mediterranean during the same time period.

            The inhumane lengths to which many nations will go to prevent migration was documented this week in The New Yorker, which reported that the European Union “has created a shadow immigration system that captures [migrants] before they reach its shores, and sends them to brutal Libyan detention centers run by militias…. It has equipped and trained the Libyan Coast Guard, a quasi-military organization linked to militias in the country, to patrol the Mediterranean, sabotaging humanitarian rescue operations and capturing migrants. The migrants are then detained indefinitely in a network of profit-making prisons run by the militias. In September of this year, around six thousand migrants were being held.. International aid agencies have documented an array of abuses: detainees tortured with electric shocks, children raped by guards, families extorted for ransom, men and women sold into forced labor.”

            Meanwhile, the world’s single largest refugee population has gone from being a headline story to yesterday’s news, a magical transformation that has disappeared almost 14 million forcibly displaced Syrians. The United Nations reports that this population is almost evenly divided between those who sought asylum abroad and the millions of internally displaced people who continue to face mass hunger, homelessness, and continued political repression.

            Conditions for the millions who were able to get out of Syria – the majority of them in Turkey – remain poor. In Lebanon, 90% of Syrian refugees live in extreme poverty, and with no official refugee camps, most are scattered throughout the country, crammed into small, over-crowded lodgings that leave them vulnerable to Covid.

The situation inside Syria remains dire. Human Rights Watch reports a widespread “inability to procure food, essential drugs, and other basic necessities. As a result, more than 9.3 million Syrians have become food insecure and over 80 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line.” The group added that on top of these deteriorating conditions, “human rights abuses in government-held territory continued unabated. Authorities brutally suppressed every sign of re-emerging dissent, including through arbitrary arrests and torture.”

 

Mass Disappearances

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), at least 100,000 Syrians remain forcibly disappeared. The network also estimates that nearly 15,000 have died due to torture since March 2011, the majority at the hands of Syrian government forces.

            It’s a human rights catastrophe that has been mislabeled a “refugee crisis,” as if those escaping persecution and desperate conditions are the root problem. In fact, the crisis results from interconnected decisions of wealthy nations like Canada. On the one hand, governmental and corporate policies give rise to a “Canada Brand” of overseas violence, repression, and displacement. On the other, Canadian policies of interdiction abroad (stationing officers in scores of countries to prevent refugees from escaping and getting here) and deadly agreements like Safe Third Country (which allows for forced return of asylum seekers from the Canadian border to the US on the outrageous claim that it is a safe country for refugees) make it impossible for far too many to find safety.

            It is the anti-refugee sentiment within Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that leads directly to findings by CBC that Canada is nowhere near hitting its refugee intake goals for 2021. One cannot blame covid here; it is a result of systems that have been created and sustained for decades in which Canada favours business class immigrants over torture survivors and long-separated loved ones.  Indeed, IRCC’s own online processing times calculator reveals an average 6-month waiting period for economic immigration applicants, whereas a privately sponsored refugee desperate to get out of Uganda faces an average delay of 34 months.

            While refugees were briefly mentioned during the 2021 pandemic election, it was largely in response to the capture of Kabul by the Taliban and Canada’s long-term, decade-long failure to provide safety for interpreters, fixers, drivers, and others who assisted the Canadian military during its occupation of Afghanistan. It was a far-cry from 2015, when the “sunny ways” Liberals took advantage of a mean-spirited Harper regime and a photo that went around the globe.

 

6 Years After Operation Syrian Refugees

            Indeed, it’s been six years since the world was transfixed by the heart-rending image of lifeless, 3-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach. In many ways, it became a touchstone issue for the 2015 federal election, with the Trudeau Liberals promising to welcome tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. Operation Syrian Refugees helped resettle 25,000 asylum seekers in the space of 100 days, and while the bulk of this work was undertaken by hard-working community members and civil society organizations, it did represent a perfect example of how humanitarian action can be enacted when the political will is there to see it through.

            Last December, Justin Trudeau looked back on that initiative by recalling how “we opened our arms and our hearts to people and families fleeing conflict, insecurity, and persecution.” Trudeau called on Canada and its international partners to “find ways to continue to protect refugees fleeing war or violence.”

            While Trudeau’s sentiment is a welcome one, it needs to find life in creative solutions to overcoming the barriers faced by those fleeing such war and violence.

One such person who desperately needs to join his family in Canada is 17-year old Yazan Al-Ali. This Syrian boy is afraid to turn 18, because that’s when the murderous Assad regime will come to claim him for its blood-stained military. His refusal to be forcibly conscripted into an atrocities-tainted army will mark him for jail, torture or death. With most of his family in Canada –including a father who is awaiting adjudication of his own refugee claim – he needs an urgent Temporary Resident Permit to escape a regime condemned by Canada for its “brutal and shocking attacks on its own people.” 

Yazan is all alone right now, hiding in Syria, as his step-mother passed away in October, 2021. His older brothers all escaped and sought asylum because they too refused to be part of the brutal Assad military. Syrian military intelligence are searching for Yazan’s father, both because he helped his other sons escape the military and because he has claimed refugee status in Canada, an act viewed by the Syrian regime as treasonous.

As a result, Yazan’s family name is red-flagged by the regime, and there is great risk of 17-year-old Yazan being targeted as a means of punishing those who have left. As a young man on his own, Yazan is also at much greater risk of sexual violence by Syrian government forces. (In March 2018, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (the Syria COI) published a report with detailed evidence on sexual violence against men and boys in Syria.)

 

Lives Like Death

Yazan’s step-siblings and extended family live a very successful life in Canada. They have the resources to welcome, support and resettle Yazan when he receives the required permission to enter Canada. But Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister Sean Fraser must act quickly, as Yazan turns 18 in less than six weeks.

Despite the recent window-dressing elections of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad, conditions have not improved whatsoever for the majority of the population. In October 2021 Human Rights Watch published a stomach-turning report, Our Lives are Like Death, which detailed the horrific mistreatment of refugees who voluntarily returned to Syria from Lebanon and Jordan.  The report notes that conditions in host countries have become so severe that growing numbers are willing to try a return to Syria, despite their fears of what awaits them. Human Rights Watch found “that returnees face many of the same violations that caused their flight from Syria. These include persecution and abuses, such as arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, torture, extra-judicial killings, kidnappings, and widespread bribery and extortion, at the hands of the Syrian security agencies and government-affiliated militias.”

On December 10 (which is also International Human Rights Day), Trudeau will no doubt issue a self-congratulatory message marking the 6^th anniversary of Operation Syrian Refugees. His government can actually provide some meaning to those fine words by committing to opening the door to far more refugees from Syria and other countries as well. A good start on the path would be granting Yazan Al-Ali a temporary resident permit to allow him to come to Canada for his own protection.

(The story appears on rabble.ca the week of November 29, 2021)

Family Reunification Backlog Not on Election Radar

Amitis Shojaei  is a 13-year-old girl who has been separated from her Calgary mother for 26 months. She fears that the current backlog could mean another 39 months of waiting.
 

By Matthew Behrens

When she was 5 years old, Amitis Shojaei dictated a story to her mother, Fatemah. A local newspaper published this tale illustrating how a mother's love saved her daughter's life: when the devil wounded the girl with a poisoned arrow of hatred, her mother hugged her and cried, and the mother's tears brought the girl to life. 

Amitis, who lives in Iran, is now a 13-year-old with an extraordinary talent for stand-up comedy. She excels at theatre and singing, with a knack for making short videos. But her creative drive has been subsumed in a cloud of depression because she has been separated from her Calgary mother for over 26 months. It could be another 39 months before her permanent residence (PR) application to come to Canada is processed.

The 26-month break in an incredibly strong mother-daughter bond has been devastating. Fatemeh, who for many understandable reasons is not sharing publicly why she had to come to Canada, suffers from severe depression due to the separation, as does Amitis, who also experiences lack of sleep, disinterest in play, and poor academic results. A November, 2019 psychiatric assessment that has been shared with Canadian officials indicates this young girl suffers greatly from anxiety and depression because of the separation from her mother, and while treatment is recommended, “it is highly recommended to change the conditions and make it possible for her to enjoy physical and emotional presence of her mother.” 

In addition to the pain of being separated from her mother and experiencing daily what it means to be a second class citizen as a girl in Iran, the conditions in Amitis’ community (where she survives with her aunt) are severe. They include a lack of electricity (and no air conditioning when daytime temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius), food and medicine shortages, and strict water rationing. Amitis is also at greater risk of contracting Covid-19, given the regime’s decision not to impose strict public health measures (arguing that the economy must remain open to counteract the devastating impact of ongoing economic sanctions). 

Amitis currently has an application in to the Canadian government for a Temporary Resident Permit (TRP), which upon approval would allow her to be reunited with her mother while her Permanent Residence application is processed. But getting that approval could prove a long and difficult journey, a challenge shared by millions of immigrants and refugees in Canada who suffer such long-term separation because of Ottawa’s failure to provide the necessary resources to address a staggering backlog of applications.

 

Political Considerations Determine Eligibility

Perhaps because many of these separated families cannot vote, it’s an issue rarely addressed on the federal campaign trail. According to figures obtained by the Toronto Star, as of early July, there were 375,137 permanent residence applications awaiting processing, along with 702,660 temporary residence hopefuls. Behind each of these million-plus applications is a story filled with the pain and trauma of separation experienced by Amitis and Fatemah. But based on their platforms, none of the major political parties appears prepared to seriously address what is in many ways a crisis induced by bureaucratic complacency and, in no small part, racism.

What harm, family reunification advocates rightfully ask, would there be in bringing over separated family members as soon as mothers or fathers in Canada have refugee status?  Why do we punish people who have been accepted for asylum – and therefore clearly cannot go back to the country from which they fled – with endless reunification delays that exacerbate the stress, fear, and anxiety already suffered by individuals who have survived persecution, torture, difficult journeys, and getting established in a nation that constantly throws barriers in their way?

Part of the answer is purely political. The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), Marco Mendicino, has significant discretion to issue TRPs to immediately reunite many of these families. But it’s a discretion he tends to use only after a family has gone through the trauma of sharing their story publicly, pushing petitions, hoisting picket signs, and engaging in incessant lobbying. Indeed, it appears that IRCC exercises its own cynical calculus in deciding whether to show humanitarian compassion, weighing the effects of negative publicity and public outrage in coming to a conclusion about approving some of these permits.

This was clear in the case of Ottawa Palestinian refugee Jihan Qunoo, who fled Gaza in 2019 and, desperate to see her three daughters after two years of separation, applied last February for visitor visas so they could spend the summer with her. They were turned down. Qunoo then took her family reunification plea to the airwaves during the May bombing of Gaza, sharing harrowing images of her girls screaming from the ear-shattering explosions and concussive effects of a direct hit on the building next door to their apartment, killing twelve neighbours.

With the assistance of the Rural Refugee Rights Network, which organized a national campaign, a petition with over 25,000 signatures, and days’ worth of lobbying and public demonstrations, Qunoo won early admission temporary resident permits (TRPs) to bring her husband and children to safety in Canada. Those permits were approved 13 days after she submitted her application. There was only one difference between the rejection in February and the happy reunion in June: public exposure and pressure.

While Qunoo’s story is a happy one – her girls started school in Ottawa last week and they can now walk home free from the worry that drones might fire missiles at them – her case is emblematic of a critical systemic problem. Indeed, it is only a massive effort that tends to produce such an individual success. While the major federal parties recognize the problem, they are at best vague on solutions and, at worst, seeing a privatization opportunity to exploit incredibly vulnerable people.

 

 

 

Liberals Favour Business Class

            Employing their favourite phrase, the Liberals claim they have “worked hard” on family reunification but blame the backlog on Stephen Harper, who left office in 2015. They promise to reduce processing time to 1 year or less (still too long, and a goal they will inevitably fail to achieve) and to also implement a program (for which no details are provided) that would provide visas to allow spouses and children to reunite while awaiting processing.  

              Trudeau’s promise to bring up to 40,000 Afghans to Canada sounds hopeful (and feels akin to his promise to bring 35,000 Syrian refugees in 2015), but advocates are furious that there has yet to be any clarity about how those desperate to escape the Taliban can get here. Calls to the special Afghanistan hotline produce a wide range of advice for asylum seekers, but no practical results. Those fleeing can see online which program they are eligible for, but there remain no details on how they can apply.

            Ultimately, the Liberals promise to continue a long-standing trend of privileging business-class immigrants over family reunification. Refugee rights lawyer and advocate Sharry Aiken points out that “about 40 per cent of the overall immigration intake came from the family class in the early 1990s. Since 2000, they've been making up just over 20 per cent because the government has put more emphasis on economic-class immigrants.”

            That is unlikely to change under a re-elected Liberal government. Whereas they dangle a 12-month waiting time for families desperate to hug loved ones, you can get here in 2 weeks under the Global Talent Stream, where a $1,000 application fee and a job offer with an $80,000 annual base salary will make you a Canadian resident in no time. For many refugees, however, running from bombs and trying to escape torture chambers leaves little time to burnish their high-tech job resumes.

            While Trudeau praises his immigration program for human rights defenders, it is largely symbolic – only 250 individuals and their families per year – and is infinitesimal compared with the 40,000 people who came to Canada in the first two years of the Global Talent Stream.

 

Tories’ Two-Tier System

In naming the many problems that plague the Canadian immigration system, the Conservative platform tries to outflank Justin Trudeau with faux compassion. They correctly claim, “it is plain wrong to stoke anxieties in vulnerable communities, a cynical art that the Trudeau Liberals have perfected,” yet they do exactly that by proposing a two-tier, trickle-down system in which the wealthy can pay for expedited processing of their applications. This sick monetization of immigration processing is based on the idea that the fast-track fees will help hire additional workers “at no additional cost to the taxpayer” with the trickle-down promise that this will help the vast majority who don’t have the money to bribe the system. This is also coded language for the kinds of public service cutbacks that the Public Service Alliance of Canada predicts under an O’Toole government. Those who survived the Reagan/Thatcher era know all too well that trickle-down approaches never succeed.

            Beneath the avuncular  image projected by O’Toole, the Tories revert to typically racist dog-whistle blame games, claiming the system suffers not from the institutional racism and complacency that are at the root of the problems, but rather so-called “bogus” refugees (who are in fact refugees who, because of the bias and barriers in the system, find themselves rejected). They also point to an alleged failure to ramp up deportation orders (despite the Liberals having set a cruel annual quota for deportations, regardless of the painful and often grave outcomes they produce). The Tories also propose moving a lot of immigration processes online, which will be a death knell for many cases, given how difficult it is to access the IRCC portals at the best of times. For individuals who do not speak English or French and do not have reliable internet, this would cut out some of the most vulnerable of applicants. While they pledge to allow someone to correct an application rather than have the whole package rejected (as often occurs),  the Conservatives’ nod to family reunification is based on coded language for private child care, prioritizing those family members whose primary role will be to provide unpaid care for kids in the home (and not in publicly-subsidized daycare).

            There is also a thinly veiled “values test” for permanent residence, which is dangled in front of students and temporary workers “so long as they are prepared to work hard, contribute to the growth and productivity of Canada, and strengthen our democracy.” The Tories would also attempt to eliminate government-assisted refugees and privatize the whole process, pushing it on to community groups and churches, all the while they hope to play the Trump card of joint patrols along the U.S. border.

 

 

 

NDP and Green’s Aspirations

            The NDP’s platform on family reunification is incredibly vague, promising only to “take on the backlog” and “fix the system,” but not saying how. It also fails to expand beyond generalities, and is silent on the lethal Safe Third Country Agreement, under which Canada sends refugee claimants back to the US despite the risk of detention and deportation. Such sloppiness for an alternative party is problematic, especially since it fails to reference a private members bill by its own tireless IRCC critic, Jenny Kwan, which would stipulate that “a foreign national who is the subject of a family sponsorship application may remain in Canada as a temporary resident until a final determination in respect of the application is made.” Nor does the NDP reference the widely-shared proposal by the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) to establish a standard of 6 months or less to reunite separated children with a parent in Canada (a benchmark that is still too long, and which would likely be abused by bureaucracies that, given an inch, will always take a mile).

            While the Greens are unlikely to have much influence on the future shaping of these issues, their platform at least stands out for raising issues that no other party includes in their platforms. For example, they are the only party to recognize and name “systemic racism and discrimination in Immigration and Refugee services” and are also alone in calling for the termination of the lethal Safe Third Country Agreement. The Greens discuss pathways to permanent residence for temporary foreign workers, increased support for parent and grandparent sponsorship, and lowering the “barriers for convention refugees to reunite with their children and bring them to Canada by making the process more accessible.” They are also the only party to call for discussions on the definition of ‘environmental refugees’ and the need for Canada to include “an appropriate share of the world’s environmental refugees into Canada.”

            But while sounding a far sight better than the other parties, the Greens ultimately fail to address how they would address these systemic problems. Simply acknowledging them and saying they need to be fixed mirrors the language of their fellow parties, and leaves those looking for hope with little to cheer.

 

A Million Unresolved Cases

            Given the vagueness and platitudes around the issue of family reunification, Amitis and her mom, Fatemah, have had to resort to the only approach that seems to make the system move: public pressure. They have started a petition, and are sharing private details of a difficult situation in the hope that someone in the system will find their file, recognize that it takes very little time to approve their temporary resident permit, and help rescue this teenaged girl from the throes of severe, separation-induced depression and the other difficult conditions she faces each day in a country wracked by economic sanctions and an out-of-control pandemic.

The fact that Canada’s refusal to fix the system is forcing Amitis and her mom to share their story with the world is inexcusable. When she was 5 years old, Amitis could still believe in the magic of a mother’s hugs and tears to bring her back from the brink of despair. But it’s harder to believe right now because of the 10,000 kilometres and two lost years that have kept them apart. Their only hope now lies in building the same kind of sustained public pressure that has reunited other separated families who, like Jihan Qunoo, have had to fight a system that is legally required to assist them in the first place.

Meanwhile, there’s over a million others who require real system change and immediate action to end the pain of indefinite family separation.