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.
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