NON-SYRIAN REFUGEES AWAIT THEIR TURN
When Carlos Hugo Jimenez fled Bolivia in April 2012 with his wife and three sons, they chose to come to Canada because of its reputation for respecting human rights.
Jimenez did not anticipate that today, almost four years after filing a refugee claim in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, he would still be waiting for a hearing to determine whether Canada will accept him and his family as refugees.
“The security that Canada offered us, with this lack of clarity about whether we have been accepted or not, has turned into insecurity,” said Jimenez, who served as Bolivia’s consul general in Washington and was the target of death threats in his native country after the political party he belonged to fell out of favour.
The Jimenez family are among more than 6,300 refugee claimants who entered Canada before Dec. 15, 2012, and are still waiting to have their cases heard, according to data from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB). Some have been waiting more than six years.
Refugee claimants who came to Canada after that date typically receive decisions on their cases within months. That’s a result of reforms Stephen Harper’s Conservative government made to the refugee determination system. (Their hearing dates come so quickly that some refugee advocates worry they don’t have enough time to prepare.)
“(Those already in the system) weren’t affected by most of the provisions of the new legislation and, particularly, they weren’t affected by the timelines. And they became forgotten,” said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.
Though the current Liberal government has positioned itself as being more compassionate toward refugees than its predecessor, refugee advocates worry that it’s not paying enough attention to those who aren’t Syrian.
Legacy claimants, some of whom are separated from children and spouses abroad while they await a decision, are in limbo. They struggle to hold long-term jobs because of their uncertain status and can’t access loans or credit cards. “Poverty is the main issue. It’s not possible here to really establish yourself,” said Francisco Rico-Martinez, codirector of the FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto.
Last year, all five members of the Jimenez family saw their work permits expire and couldn’t work for three months while waiting for them to be renewed. The three Jimenez boys, ages 20, 22 and 25, have forgone university because they cannot afford international student tuition. The family tried to support the eldest through a business degree, but he had to drop out because it was too costly.
Instead, they’ve been jumping between low-paying jobs in places like construction sites and cosmetics factories. Frustrated, the family recently started a company that cleans exhaust systems.
“You have to think reality. You can’t access certain things,” said Diego Jimenez, the youngest of the three brothers. He dreams of attending veterinary school but is instead saving up for a cheaper course to train as an automotive technician.
“If you can’t be given a hearing within a fair time, then it’s unfair,” said Dench.
She said that, if circumstances change in a claimant’s home country and it is no longer as risky for them to return, their refugee claim may not succeed, even if they would have been granted refugee status when they arrived. Such failed refugee claimants have little recourse because, in most circumstances, they are barred for one year from filing an application to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
“The only solution for this problem is to have a program to regularize them,” said Rico-Martinez. The FCJ Refugee Centre is proposing a new immigration class for these legacy claimants that would grant them to right to stay in Canada based on their involvement in community groups, economic integration and social ties.
But Julie Taub, an immigration and refugee lawyer in Ottawa, said they shouldn’t be given preferential treatment. She said that the government should hire temporary IRB members to speedily wrap up legacy cases.
“They have not been at any great disadvantage being in Canada. They’ve had health care coverage and they’ve had work permits,” she said.
But the IRB doesn’t have plans to finish hearing all remaining legacy cases until the end of 2018. “The new referrals, which must be scheduled for hearings according to the law, are the first priority,” said Anna Pape, a spokesperson for IRB, in an email.
For the Jimenez family, a notification of their hearing date can’t come soon enough.
“We wake up every day not knowing what our future is going to be,” said Carlos Jimenez.