“Where are our Syrian refugee families?” This is a troubling question being asked by thousands of people in the Lower Mainland and thousands more would-be private sponsors across the country. These are people who have been moved to lend a hand by the horrendous disaster driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in Syria and finding themselves in pitiful conditions in refugee camps.
I should disclose that I too was caught up in this challenge that was taken on by community groups and various faith groups. It seemed like such a Canadian thing to do.
Even before Harper’s Tories, with their pathetic response to this crisis, were knocked from power, Vancouverites, among others, were organizing themselves to reach out to privately sponsor refugees.
When the Liberals took over and committed to increasing the number of government sponsored refugees, while encouraging Canadians to take part in this humanitarian exercise, many more groups in cities and towns from coast to coast joined in.
According to David Berson, who is part of a group connected to Vancouver’s Or Shalom synagogue, some 3,000 people hereabouts have raised three quarters of a million dollars and have applied to bring in about 100 refugees. Bringing these refugees to Canada would cost the government nothing.
Teams of volunteers have been created that have located living accommodations, figured out how to get the refugees access to credit, English language classes and possible employment. There are teams of people who will help them figure out where to shop, how to get their medical insurance and connect their kids with the education system.
In short, they have a complete resettlement strategy. What they lack are people to resettle.
The pipeline that was established by the Liberals in the Middle East with 650 people assigned by the government to help refugees was shut down. In February, shortly after the Liberals met their target of 25,000 mostly government-sponsored refugees and were bathing in the glow of their political success, those 650 folks were pulled back to Canada.
The family my little group is bringing in, Shah and Mayah Bazeri and their two daughters, like many of those with private sponsors, are stuck in a camp in Erbil in northern Iraq. Erbil has a Canadian Trade Mission there, but no immigration staff.
To make their position more precarious, they are Kurds, a group that has suffered persecution through much of their history. The Bazeris have relatives in Coquitlam, so they would be coming in as part of a family reunification program.
To give you an idea of how desperate things are, Shah had a stepbrother also in Erbil. Along with his wife and four children, they, too, were seeking to go to Canada. A short time ago they simply gave up. They turned to people smugglers and paid for a boat trip from Turkey — just north of Erbil — to Greece. When the boat went down mid-way, 34 people lost their lives including those six. The stepbrother’s body was never recovered.
Kathleen MacKinnon is part of a community group based in False Creek, working through the United Church. That group’s family is in Dohuk, also in northern Iraq. Her group was so certain that family would soon be arriving they actually started paying rent on accommodations here.
Earlier this week, MacKinnon told me the paperwork to move that family closer to coming to Canada has been sitting on an immigration department bureaucrat’s desk in Winnipeg for the past two months.
When John McCallum, the Liberal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, was in town a few weeks ago speaking to the Board of Trade, MacKinnon was there to explain the dilemma being faced by privately sponsored refugees. McCallum apparently committed to look into it.
There is the possibility the government will enlist the help of international refugee-serving groups so these families can be cleared by health and security people.
Meanwhile, nothing has changed, except, ironically, that a parliamentary committee is setting up to assess the Syrian refugee initiative.
And groups like MacKinnon’s are hearing that nothing will happen until the end of this year, or early 2017. To which she says: “We would be disappointed if our family has to spend another winter in a leaky tent.”
That could be the case, unless a fire can be lit under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.
@allengarr
