{"id":15383,"date":"2015-10-23T00:09:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T07:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=15383"},"modified":"2015-10-22T16:43:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T23:43:29","slug":"refugee-system-doesnt-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/10\/23\/refugee-system-doesnt-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Refugee system doesn\u2019t work"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to David Matas, former president of Canadian Council of Refugees (CCR), changes that have been made to this country\u2019s refugee system within the last few years have made it more difficult to sponsor refugees.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
David Matas is a vocal proponent of changing Canada\u2019s immigration system. (photo from\u00a0David Matas)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe set up a sponsorship system in \u201978 and it was used in \u201979 and \u201980 and years around there to bring in the Vietnamese refugees,\u201d said Matas. With the different sponsorship programs developed over the years, mixed with the growing willingness of people to sponsor, visa offices no longer have the capacity to process the amount of sponsorship applications, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe response of the government, in my view, should have been to increase the resources to match the sponsorship need, but that\u2019s not what happened,\u201d he said. \u201cInstead, what they did is put visa caps on the offices with the biggest numbers, as well as an overall local cap for private sponsorship through sponsorship agreement holders. Then, they divided the global cap amongst the sponsorship agreement holders.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, \u201cA group of five (G5) is five or more Canadian citizens or permanent residents who have arranged to sponsor a refugee living abroad to come to Canada. All of the group members must be at least 18 years of age and live or have representatives in the area where the refugee will settle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe group must agree to give emotional and financial support to the refugee(s) for the full sponsorship period \u2013 usually one year.\u201d<\/p>\n

They couldn\u2019t cap the G5 applications in the same way as the other, so what they did instead, said Matas, \u201cwas insist that anybody who sponsored through group of five had to get prior approval \u2026 through the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is much more overwhelmed and under-funded than the Canadian government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CIC website explains that, effective Oct. 19, 2012, \u201ca G5 may only sponsor applicants who are recognized as refugees by either the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or a foreign state, unless you are applying to sponsor a Syrian or Iraqi refugee.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Matas, the caps made the lines longer, forcing people to reapply year after year, making it so that anybody who applied had to wait years before sponsorship came through.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, obviously when you\u2019re dealing with refugee people marching across Europe, they can\u2019t wait years,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, what\u2019s more, there is a direct connection between people leaving and the failure of the sponsorship. Because, if people know they\u2019re putting in an application and, if they hang around, it will succeed, they\u2019ll stay. But, if it\u2019s going to take five or 10 years, there is no point in waiting.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, there\u2019s a direct connection between this exodus that we\u2019re seeing now, the failure of the Canadian sponsorship scheme and the absence of any European sponsorship schemes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matas believes that if we had kept our Canadian sponsorship scheme as it was, then we could have advised Europe to do the same and, if Europe had agreed, all this mass migration could have been avoided.<\/p>\n

Recent turmoil has simply shined a spotlight on the issue. \u201cIt\u2019s just like water pressing against a dam,\u201d said Matas. \u201cIn the beginning, it doesn\u2019t have any impact. It\u2019s only when it breaks, or the water overflows the dam, that you notice the dam isn\u2019t working or that the dam is a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current situation does not come as a big surprise to him, with visa offices being \u201cunder water\u201d for years. But, instead of giving them more \u201cair\u201d (staff), they were further strained by the capping system, which artificially controlled the number of refugees going through the system, regardless of need.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the failure of the Canadian system, there wasn\u2019t a picture to show the Europeans how it is done and ask them to do the same,\u201d said Matas. Instead, \u201cWe have a system that collapsed. Well, not completely, but it ceased to be functional.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Matas, the caps need to be removed and the system resources increased \u201cto match the private sponsorship, so we don\u2019t have the generosity of Canadians being frustrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

In early September, Matas spoke at a public rally about refugees organized by the Kurdish community of Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe refugee sponsorship and resettlement community has been against these changes from the first minute they were discussed,\u201d he said. \u201cI am not presenting a new idea here. I\u2019m reiterating a stand that has been taken many times in the past by the refugee support, resettlement, integration [and] advocacy community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The topic became an election issue, with candidates talking in terms of numbers \u2013 but not in terms of fixing the mechanics of the system. However, said Matas, \u201cPresumably, with the numbers will go the capacity to process them.\u201d<\/p>\n

While many of the refugees arriving in Europe are Syrian, many are not, said Matas. \u201cWhile the situation in Syria is terrible, it\u2019s not the only place in the world that\u2019s terrible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

About the Canadian government\u2019s decision to not have Canadian visa officers apply the UN refugee definition to 10,000 Syrians, thereby allowing these 10,000 to enter Canada on a first-come, first-served basis, Matas said, \u201cThe government, with the recent announcement, did nothing to fix the system,\u201d said Matas. \u201cRather, it acknowledged, indirectly, its failure, by deciding not to apply it to 10,000 random Syrians who may or may not be refugees. As far as I am concerned, that is not much of a response to the global refugee crisis or even, for that matter, the Syrian one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to David Matas, former president of Canadian Council of Refugees (CCR), changes that have been made to this country\u2019s refugee system within the last few years have made it more difficult to sponsor refugees. \u201cWe set up a sponsorship system in \u201978 and it was used in \u201979 and \u201980 and years around there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1121,356,2708,1942],"class_list":["post-15383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","tag-david-matas","tag-immigration","tag-refugees","tag-syria"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}