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.
