Bring them in quickly

Bring back the troops.

In this case we’re not talking the armed forces. We’re talking about federal immigration officials. They’re the ones who speedily processed applications for 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February, but then were quietly sent back to their regular jobs by the Trudeau government. That left thousands of privately sponsored refugees, who aren’t here yet, in the lurch.

Also in the lurch are their Canadian sponsors, who have spent months preparing to welcome Syrian refugee families by raising money, renting and furnishing homes, finding schools for the kids, organizing language training and more.

Now that they’re ready, willing and waiting, they understandably want those families processed and brought to Canada as quickly as possible. But according to Immigration Minister John McCallum, it could be the end of 2016 or even 2017 before these sponsored refugees are brought to Canada.

That’s not good enough. The government needs to speed up the processing of these refugee families, as it did the original 25,000. After all, the sponsoring groups spent time, effort, money and goodwill on bringing them to Canada at the government’s invitation and encouragement.

It’s also tough to understand how Ottawa could argue it was responding to a humanitarian crisis when it welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, but now drags its heels when it comes to bringing in others that Canadians have already sponsored. After all, the crisis has not ended. Millions of Syrians are still stranded in refugee camps. Canadians want to do more to help.

To be fair, the situation was worse until last Thursday. Until then, the government was insisting that all privately sponsored Syrian refugees would have to compete for spots with refugees from around the world for a total of 10,500 places in Canada for 2016.

But under pressure from sponsoring groups, McCallum reversed that decision and agreed to process Syrian refugees whose applications were in before March 31 on top of that total.

Still, Ottawa has tapped into a wellspring of generosity and cannot suddenly just turn it off.

McCallum should speed up sponsorship applications for Syrian refugees that have already been submitted and make sure they are approved as quickly as possible. Considering the speed with which Ottawa brought in 25,000 Syrian refugees, he should be able to accommodate the private sponsors’ families within a few months, not a year.

Thousands of refugees and their sponsors have been left in the lurch