Life in limbo for hundreds of Syrian families
Advocate group urges government to arrange flights for sponsored refugees
In January, Canadian officials matched Sarah Crawford and her sponsorship group with a Syrian family in Turkey and told them the refugees could be here in as soon as four weeks.
The group spent thousands of dollars renting a bungalow near Victoria Park Ave. and Ellesmere Rd. that sat empty for four months before the family of six finally arrived on June 1 from Istanbul.
Despite the long wait and wasted rent money, Crawford’s group, Rise Again, from Rosedale United Church, is actually one of the lucky ones. Hundreds of other groups are still waiting for their families to arrive.
According to Canada for Refugees, a coalition of community sponsorship groups, 2,900 refugees, or about 500 families, who have been fully approved and are ready to travel are stuck in limbo, having already waited two or three months or longer to get on a plane to Canada.
“We are asking the Canadian government to arrange charter flights to get these approved families to Canada quickly,” said Doug Earl, of Canada for Refugees.
“The refugees are in very precarious situations in the Middle East, and there are many citizen sponsorship groups here in Canada waiting to welcome them and help them settle in their new home.”
On May 9, Ottawa dispatched 40 additional staff to the Middle East to process Syrian refugee sponsorship applications in response to a public outcry over processing delays after the government met its target of resettling 25,000 Syrians refugees by the end of February.
The latest revelation of delays came just as the government wrapped up a six-week “blitz” in which officials completed 6,100 refugee interviews.
According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, these individuals and families will continue through the screening process, including full health and security checks.
It will be another three to six months before they arrive.
“Once a visa has been issued, the refugees’ information will be passed to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM will organize the Canada orientation abroad training, obtain the necessary exit permits from the country where the refugee is located and schedule transportation to Canada,” the immigration department said.
“While it is important to prepare for the arrival of the sponsored refugees, we encourage sponsors not to obtain permanent accommodations too far in advance. Arrival times are approximate and depend on a number of factors.”
Earl said the number of Syrian refugees waiting for planes to Canada is increasing by 70 a week, and in one of its members’ cases, the family was approved in late February and has yet to arrive.
“Many of these families have children whose best interests would be being settled in Canada before the start of the school year,” Earl said. “For that to happen, they need to be moved now.”
Ross McGregor, another Canada for Refugees member, said sponsorship groups are willing to book their own flights to fly their approved families to Canada.
“The 40 extra staff were pulled out last Saturday and we are now back to square one,” McGregor said, adding the government could unlock an estimated $24 million raised by sponsorship groups by investing $3 million in charter flights for the approved refugees.
However, an immigration department spokesperson said sponsors should not book flights for their sponsored families because they’ll need exit permits from the host country and the IOM is best placed to assist with this process.
As of May 29, 27,580 Syrian refugees had been resettled to Canada from the Middle East since the Liberals came into power in November.
“We are pleased the government has stepped up to the plate. We know that it’s not going to be perfect, but some improvement is really needed,” Crawford said.