Minister said ‘hundreds’ of Canadians might use Gaza visa. More than 7,500 applied.
More than 7,500 Canadians signed up in the first three months of the year to get family out of Gaza through a federal visa pathway that lawyers have described as onerous, chaotic and nearly impossible to complete.
The numbers obtained by
The Canadian Press through a freedom of information request are “shocking,” said Debbie Rachlis, an immigration lawyer based in Toronto. She said they show that thousands more Canadians are scrambling to rescue family members from the Israel-Hamas war than Ottawa first estimated when it launched the program in January.
Rachlis, who represents dozens of applicants in the program, said some applications cover seven or eight Gazans in the same family, meaning the actual number of people seeking to get to Canada is even higher. “To me, it’s just another indication of how grudging this government’s response was to the plight of these people,” she said.
The data show Canadians filed 7,549 initial applications, or statutory declarations, to obtain temporary visas for their family members from the day the program opened on Jan. 9 through April 1.
When Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced his department’s plans to launch the family reunification program in December, he told a news conference he expected the number of people who might benefit would be “in the hundreds.”
From those 7,549 declarations filed, just 179 visas had been issued as of April 29, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
The process to apply for temporary refuge involves several steps, starting with a statutory declaration from a Canadian family member and an online form with details about their situation. After that, some applicants receive a unique code, and only then can they begin the second stage of the application process.
The family members must cross the Egyptian border from Rafah to Cairo for a final security screening before a visa will be issued, a step that has proved particularly challenging. The Canadian Press has spoken to several Palestinians who, frustrated with Ottawa’s inability to help, paid thousands of dollars to a private Egyptian company to shuttle them across the border from Rafah.
Israel’s seizure of the border on Tuesday will likely make the crossing even more difficult. “It means we will not be able to get people out, and that’s an extreme concern to me,” Miller said on Tuesday.
The data obtained last week show 2,755 unique codes had been issued as of April 1 to those who had filed a statutory declaration. From those who received codes, the department had received 1,977 applications for the second stage of the process.
The federal Immigration Department initially said it would only consider 1,000 applications for the program, prompting an outcry from the National Council of Canadian Muslims and many lawyers, including Rachlis. Miller has since said Canada will consider more, but he has not said how many.
The department said last week that 986 “complete” applications are in processing. Previous emails from the department show that number has not budged since at least March 4.