Language benchmarks an obstacle for immigrants

SURREY, B.C. — Fatum Ibrahim is pointing to her nose and smiling ear-to-ear.

“Nose,’’ she proudly pronounces, eager to demonstrate her expanding English vocabulary.

Three years ago, a day shy of Valentine’s Day, 36-year old Ibrahim and seven family members landed in Surrey, B.C., as part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s signature Syrian Refugee Initiative. She didn’t know a word of English, nor could she read or write in her native Arabic.

Despite taking language classes four days a week, she has a long way to go to meet the Englishlanguage requirement for Canadian citizenship. While her mom, dad, grandmother and two school-age brothers are eligible to become citizens this year, she and two other adult siblings, who also never learned to read or write, will not be. Without a passport, they are stuck in Canada, unable to visit the six siblings they left behind in Turkey.

“I want to be a Canadian. I love it because our country has been destroyed and is gone. Now Canada is our only country . ... But I don’t think I will learn to pass the English test until the end of my life,’’ Ibrahim says through an interpreter.

Ibrahim and her two siblings, both of whom live with intellectual disabilities, are not anomalies.

Government-assisted Syrian refugees came to Canada with less education than the refugees who came before them. Eightyone per cent of the first 15,000 government-assisted refugees reported an education level of secondary school or less.

While Syria’s average literacy rate — eight in 10 before the war took a toll — is relatively high for the region, there is a sizeable disparity between rates for men and women. Only 77 per cent of Syrian women are literate, compared with 90 per cent of men, with rural women such as Ibrahim faring the worst. It was these women and their families whom the Canadian government prioritized for resettlement.

“I went to school only for one year, in the first grade. But I didn’t like it. I wasn’t smart,’’ Ibrahim says. “None of my sisters finished school; our brothers did. We spent our days cooking, cleaning the house, laughing, playing. We were so happy . ... Only here in Canada did I start school again. I was terrified.’’

Diana Jeffries manages English-language classes for Pacific Immigrant Resources Society, with funding from the federal government’s Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program. She says adult literacy learners such as Ibrahim are right to wonder whether they will ever qualify for citizenship.

To meet the English-language requirement, individuals must reach Level 4 of the Canadian language benchmarks, meaning they can understand simple sentences and use basic grammar. Ibrahim has sat in a Level 1 class for more than a year.