Few refugees have been processed to settle in Canada

Most of the 5,800 this year are destined for the U.S., but target expected to increase

AMMAN, JORDAN— The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Amman has processed 5,800 refugees for resettlement this year, but only a very low percentage are destined for Canada.

The UNHCR expects Canada’s target will increase in the coming months, and says Canada is known for stepping up for urgent or crisis cases, including victims of torture and spousal violence as well as LGBTI cases, said Karen Whiting, a senior protection officer with the UNHCR. Most of this year’s 5,800 refugees — both Iraqi and Syrian, though the majority are Syrian — are destined for the U.S.

Whiting said the migrant crisis in Europe has drawn renewed interest in helping Syrian refugees and she wished the UNHCR could move more quickly to interview them. “It takes time to scale up and to increase our capacity to meet the increased interest by donor countries,” said Whiting. “We need more money, more staff, more interview rooms.”

Of the 630,000 Syrians refugees who are here, only a fraction — about one per cent — will be resettled, which means there is an overwhelming need to support the remaining refugees “especially if we want to stop people from fleeing to Europe,” Whiting added.

About 100,000 refugees reside in two camps in Jordan; the rest live in Amman and other cities. Living conditions are difficult; two months ago, the World Food Program reduced its food assistance to 50 cents a day for urban refugees.

Families with several children are often squeezed into one-room apartments in dilapidated buildings high in the hills or on the outskirts of Amman, and can afford only rice and onions and other basics.

While their children can attend public school here, refugees are not allowed to work. Many have sold all their valuables just to pay rent, and buy jackets and shoes for their children for the coming winter. Others have serious medical problems including asthma, heart disease and high blood pressure and cannot afford to purchase medication.

The only group in Jordan doing refugee selection on behalf of private sponsors in Canada is the Office for Refugees in the Archdiocese of Toronto. A nine-member volunteer team led by Martin Mack, ORAT’s director, arrived here Oct. 2, and has spent the last week interviewing refugees, mainly Syrian Muslims, Iraqi Christians, as well as some Sudanese. They are so overwhelmed with appli- cations, they are forced to conduct interviews in the hallways of their borrowed “office” in three local nongovernmental organizations. Team members, who work from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m., rely on volunteer translators, and are paying their own expenses for this trip.

ORAT will submit the successful applications to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) for security and health screenings, a six- to eightmonth process. CIC officials at the Canadian Embassy in Amman want to speed up this process and have recently brought in extra staff, said Mack.

ORAT has already submitted 900 refugees for resettlement this year, about a third of whom are Muslim Syrians.

Many refugees have sold all their valuables just to pay rent, and buy jackets and shoes for their children for the coming winter