THE TWO KINDS OF REFUGEES

Since November 4, 2015, Canada has accepted 15,001 government assisted refugees, 8,981 privately sponsored refugees and 2,225 blended visa office referrals. According to a recent report from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada based on refugee cases either approved or in progress on Jan. 6, there are significant differences between Syrian refugees who are privately sponsored and those who are government assisted.

Privately sponsored refugees tend to have far smaller family sizes, with the majority of approved cases (52 per cent) having just one person on the application, and 93 per cent of applications consisting of between one and four people. By contrast, more than half (53 per cent) of government-assisted families had five to eight people on the application. Larger families are harder to house, especially in pricey cities such as Vancouver and Toronto.

Government-assisted refugees from Syria generally: are younger, with the majority (56 per cent) children 14 and under. Just under a third (31 per cent) of privately sponsored refugees were under 15, while 33 per cent were between the ages of 25 and 44. Are less likely to speak an official language. Somewhere between 70 and 90 per cent did not speak any English or French, compared with 41 per cent of privately sponsored refugees. Have a secondary school education or less. More than two-thirds (68 per cent) of governmentassisted refugees 15 and older had a secondary school education or less, with another 21 per cent having an unspecified level of education. The report did not have information on the education levels of privately sponsored refugees. Consist of families in which formal work experience is almost entirely limited to men and the experience is largely in low-skilled work. Common occupations include taxi or truck driver, construction, cook or farmer, the report said.