Pictou refugee sponsors frustrated by paperwork

Donna Collins and her husband Stephen MacKenzie are frustrated that local sponsors like themselves often face a wall of bureaucracy when bringing Syrian refugees to Pictou County.

The couple, who live in Pictou, are sponsoring and preparing to welcome the Albarazi family when they arrive tomorrow at Stanfield Airport from Turkey. The family includes Bader, his younger sister Ayah and parents Fakher and Rima.

Collins and MacKenzie took the Albarazis’ case to local MP Sean Fraser, whose staff contacted the Canadian embassy in Ankara and sped up the process, but not all refugee sponsors are so lucky.

“They do all the paperwork and then you just sit and wait and wait and wait. They don’t have the resources to do any pushing,” Collins said.

Filing a sponsorship application requires fundraising, a stack of paperwork filed with the sponsorship agreement holder, which is then processed by the government in Ottawa, embassy in Ankara and the Turkish authorities.

Fraser himself acknowledged that “volunteers who have worked incredibly hard who do find the process quite frustrating at times.”

However, such difficulties were temporarily eased in late 2015 after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won that year’s federal election.

Fulfilling an election promise, the government airlifted 25,000 Syrian refugees from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey to new lives in Canada.

These refugees were quickly processed by United Nations and Canadian government staff including military personnel, who conducted medical and security screening on refugees.

By early 2016, the first 25,000 Syrians had been resettled. With the organized airlift over, the refugee sponsorship process slowed down.

As such, the number of sponsorship applications has far outpaced new refugee landings, even as Ottawa has tried to bump up resettlement, creating a backlog.

“I don’t want to give people false hope,” said Collins.

Fraser said that roughly 50,000 Syrians have been resettled in Canada since 2015.

According to federal government figures, just 1,290 Syrian refugees were admitted to Canada in 2014, the year before Justin Trudeau’s Liberals came to power.

Canada can process up to 17,000 refugees a year from across the world, according to Fraser. This figure does not include the extra 25,000 Syrians airlifted by Trudeau’s government after it took office.

“This was a one-time plan to increase the number of refugees to deal with a specific emergency,” said Fraser.

Once refugees reach Canada, they will need services such as resettlement agencies and language classes to help them integrate into their new home.

While resettlement services in major cities are filled to capacity, the strain is not so severe in rural areas.

Locally, the Multicultural Association of Pictou County offers both social events and English classes.

Many Syrians resettled in Pictou County are already entering the workplace and starting small businesses.

Privately-sponsored refugees are most successful when it comes to community integration, language ability and employment.