Moving mountains for world’s asylum-seekers
CHURCH GROUPS VITAL TO RESETTLEMENT PROCESS
For the past 15 years, Gail Millard has nudged, pushed and all but cudgelled her fellow Anglicans to sponsor refugees to come to Canada. Only since early September, when photos of three-year-old refugee Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea with members of his family as they tried to flee Syria, appeared in the media, has the trickle of responses become a flood.
“It’s both sad and good,” says Millard, refugee coordinator for Edmonton’s Anglican Diocese. “There are 16 million refugees in the world. I’ve been trying to get parishes to sponsor from other places for years. It just took the tragedy of that poor little boy to spark interest.”
Private refugee sponsorship is a daunting process, requiring commitment, money and most often, years of planning. Syria’s refugee crisis, along with federal Liberal promises to bring 25,000 refugees to Canada by the end of February, will compress years into a few urgent weeks.
Of the 10,000 Syrian refugees expected in Canada by New Year’s Day, 80 per cent are expected to land in Canadian airports thanks to private sponsorship.
Faith-based groups will play a vital role in greeting them here. Churches dominate a government roster of more than 100 organizations pre-approved for refugee work, but they also have capacity, experience and histories of moving mountains. In a climate of fearfulness, workers see their work as bridge-building, a way to help ease minds and humanize their global neighbours. One woman joined her parish committee, says Millard, admitting she was “terrified of refugee sponsorship” and wanted to face those fears head on.
Having had a hand in hundreds of refugee sponsorships, Millard says it’s rare for applications to move as quickly as they are now, but if it awakens more churches to the plight of refugees, long hours of planning, fundraising and organizing are worth it.
Citizen and Immigration Canada pegs “startup costs” at $7,200 for each family of five, with another $22,500 to support that family for 12 months. Smaller families cost more per capita. And in most urban centres, organizations frequently tell constituency groups to prepare for costs 20 or 30 per cent more. Even assuming more conservative costs for refugee families, private sponsors will need to raise roughly $50 million by year’s end to bring in 8,000 refugees.
Less than a week after Alan Kurdi’s death, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto launched Project Hope, an ambitious campaign aimed at raising $3 million and the formation of 100 constituency groups linked to local churches. Eighty-five days in, they’ve raised $2.6 million and found 85 groups ready to welcome families to Canada.
At least one family will be supported by the Vietnamese congregation at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church, located in the Junction in west Toronto. More than $10,000 has been raised already, says the church’s pastor, who sees the efforts as partly inspired by a similar welcome 35 years ago, when 50,000 Vietnamese immigrants came to Canada.
“We were welcomed by the Canadian government and we enjoy the generosity of the Canadian people,” says Rev. Joseph Tran. “So now we would like to sponsor a family of refugees in return.”
With determined volunteers and a built-in donation base, faith-based organizations are well suited for refugee work. Privately sponsored refugees tend to fare better than their government counterparts, government studies have shown.
In Toronto, the Archdiocese is home to 225 Catholic churches. Since instituting a full-time refugee office in 2009, they’ve brought 3,000 people to 160 parishes.
Churches helping refugees is a well-worn Canadian story. After the Second World War, countless churches helped settle hundreds of thousands of Germans. Hungarian refugees fled from revolution in 1956, and in later years, so did Central Americans, Kosovars and Somalis. Canada’s current list of sponsorship organizations is dominated by Eritrean and Ethiopian groups and churches. In most cases, anxieties over newcomers usually died within a generation.
Inside the Calgary office of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), Jeremy Fehr has been working nonstop connecting Syrian refugees with Canadian groups and families. It’s a crisis that echoes the story of the Mennonites, the Christian pacifists who faced turmoil in Ukraine under Stalinist rule in the 1920s.
Fehr began as an intern in September, having arrived in Calgary after a year-long Christian leadership program on Vancouver Island. His new position quickly become a year-long job as a refugee sponsorship assistant. “It’s intense. There’s definitely a drive behind everything I do,” says Fehr, 19.
Alberta’s MCC chapter has aggressively pursued refugee resettlement, in many cases outside of denominational and faith boundaries, submitting 553 individual applications before the end of November.
That includes undertakings on behalf of 20 Alberta churches, predominantly Mennonite but also from several other denominations, and 21 communities and groups with no religious affiliation. Groups with no connections to refugees are eligible to apply for a blended program, in which the government pays up to six months income support for refugees referred through the United Nations refugee agency.
Ongoing refugee work has helped forge connections with Edmonton’s Islamic Family and Social Services Association and Syrian community organizations, who have been referring families to the MCC for help. Already, more than 145 named relative applications have been filed, Fehr says.
MCC is one of the few church organizations with a refugee office in Calgary. They’ve become a local hub for groups grappling with the process, trying to find housing or wading through paperwork.
“We really came into this not knowing what our limit would be, and so we’ve just kind of been working to our full capacity,” Fehr says. “There’s still going to be more to come.”
Fehr is constantly answering calls offering basements, winter boots and help for the waves of government sponsored refugees to come, who will be helped through settlement agencies. He also responds to anxieties about the process and assures people of MCC’s confidence in the UN refugee selection process. The response has been heartening, he says, evincing a belief that in a fearful world, Christians must respond with openness.
Millard took her volunteer position at the local Anglican diocese after raising her family, and a career as an interior decorator. But she feels “chosen” for this work.
Thanks to her participation, her friendship circle includes people from Bosnia, Congo, Colombia, Burma and Somalia. Her south Edmonton church, St. John the Evangelist, has sponsored 14 families in the last two decades, recently adding their first Syrian family. They’re working with an outside group to bring in a second, and when that’s done, they’ll sponsor another. If Millard has any say, she’ll convince her church to take 10 more.
“When they walk through that door in the airport, it’s a feeling I can’t even describe,” Millard says. “The poor people are just absolutely wiped out, but they’re so happy, they’re so relieved. And they’re anxious, as well, because they have to start over in a new country.”
THERE’S DEFINITELY A DRIVE BEHIND EVERYTHING I DO.
THE POOR PEOPLE ARE JUST ABSOLUTELY WIPED OUT, BUT THEY’RE SO HAPPY, THEY’RE SO RELIEVED. AND THEY’RE ANXIOUS, AS WELL, BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO START OVER IN A NEW COUNTRY. — REFUGEE CO-ORDINATOR, GAIL MILLARD