No Syrians on expedited refugee list until last week, Anglican Diocese of Ottawa official says
A two-year-old federal government program that lists pre-approved refugees in order to speed their passage to Canada had no Syrian names on it until last week, according to the chair of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa’s refugee working group.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) supplies the names of pre-cleared refugees to Canadian visa offices. The list, which currently contains about 400 names, is circulated weekly to more than 90 organizations in Canada — including the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa — that have signed sponsorship agreements with the government. The groups can then select names from the list of those they want to sponsor to Canada.
Those chosen typically arrive here within about two months, compared to up to two years for other private sponsorships, said Don Smith, the chair of the diocese’s refugee working group.
The government has given priority status to refugees from Syria and Iraq, which in theory should speed up the processing of their claims, Smith said in an interview Thursday.
“The problem is, in the last two years when we’ve been talking about the Syrians, it’s only last week that Syrians started showing up on a visa office-referred database,” Smith said.
The dozen Syrian cases on last week’s list were quickly snapped up by groups in Canada, he said.
“Most of them were picked up almost immediately. People want to sponsor Syrians. But it’s taken two years for them to start giving us cases.”
Smith – who admitted he was “extremely” frustrated by the government’s handling of the refugee crisis – said he could only speculate about the reason why Syrian cases hadn’t appeared on the expedited list until last week. “We’ve been asking the minister what’s been going on for two years.”
A year ago, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander blamed the UNHCR, saying it had been unable to refer Syrian cases to Canada’s visa office in Beirut.
“We believed that for a while,” Smith said. “But I was talking to someone who worked with the UN in Beirut recently, and they said UNHCR has a list of 10,000 people. So I don’t know.”
The Citizen asked Citizenship and Immigration why Syrians were left off the expedited list of refugees until last week, but the department was unable to provide a response Thursday.
Since last December, the Ottawa diocese has submitted sponsorship applications for 12 Syrian and Iraqi refugee claimants, but none has yet made it to Ottawa.
Most were submitted under a different private sponsorship program known as sponsor-referred, Smith said. “That’s where a Syrian- or Iraqi-Canadian family comes to us and says, ‘Will you please sponsor my family overseas?'”
The paperwork required to bring refugees to Canada in sponsor-referred cases is “horrendous,” Smith said. “I figure it takes about 100 hours to put it together.”
The application goes to Citizenship and Immigration’s central processing office in Winnipeg. If approved, it goes on to a Canadian visa office abroad, where officials interview the prospective refugees and eventually rule on their eligibility.
The entire process can take up to two years, Smith said, in itself is a significant barrier. “It’s hard to keep a (sponsorship) group together for two or three years, waiting for someone to come.”
By contrast, refugees selected from the expedited list can make it to Canada in as little as a month. Citizenship and Immigration does almost all the paperwork and pays for up to six months of refugees’ costs in Canada during the first year.
Canadians wishing to sponsor Syrian refugees can also form so-called “Groups of Five” and apply to bring family members or others to Canada. But the government requires those sponsored by Groups of Five to already have refugee status determination document from UNHCR.
“The chances, particularly in Syria or Lebanon, of your relative having that document, it just hasn’t happened because UNHCR doesn’t have the time,” Smith said.
As a result, almost all Groups of Five applications in the past two years have been rejected in Winnipeg, he said.
The government needs to put “a lot more staff” into its Winnipeg office and its visa posts, Smith said. “They know how long it takes to process a case, so they have to invest in the staff to process them.”
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