Canadian officials in Jordan assessing Syrian refugees by the hundreds

AMMAN, Jordan — A team of Canadian officials in Jordan is working at full steam, processing hundreds of people each day as Canada prepares to welcome waves of Syrian refugees.

When the processing centre in capital city Amman opened on Nov. 29, it had about 100 people going through its doors every day; now the centre is humming with about 500 refugees daily.
Processing that many people is vital to the federal government hitting its refugee resettlement goals.

It’s not a simple process.

Each family hoping to be resettled in Canada has to visit the centre, at least three times.

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There’s one session to fill out forms, to be interviewed and to go through security checks; in a second session, applicants have to go to a hospital for chest X-rays to check for tuberculosis; a third session is for final medical examinations.

Canadian officials say typically 90 per cent of the refugees who make it into the process would be accepted. But in a little more than a week since the work began at the processing centre, no refugees have yet completed the process and been given a Canadian visa.

No one will say exactly when that will happen.

“As soon as possible,” says Olivier Jacques, the director of the Canadian Operations Centre. “We’re pushing and checking every day if we can issue visas.”

It appears the process is slower than expected. There had been reports of flights leaving Amman for Canada as early as Thursday. That’s looking less likely.

But once officials have the numbers and the leases on planes, things will start to move fast.

“If you look at two charter flights, which is best case scenario, you’d be looking at about 700 people a day departing and arriving in Canada, which is about 4,000 a week,” says Craig Murphy of the International Organization for Migration.

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As the families wait for their turn, a television in the waiting area shows images of Canada — from scenes of Parliament Hill to footage of ambulances and fire trucks. It’s to give some sort of idea of what to expect after moving around the world.

“There’s some trepidation,” says Wendy Gall, one of Canada’s Foreign Service officers conducting interviews. “A lot of excitement. A lot of uncertainty.”

She says so many of them have “experienced tremendous loss” after leaving their homes to flee to safety.

“They’ve come to another country and they’re doing what they can here. And Canada is an even bigger difference for them. It’s further away, further from their families, further from a society that they know, from culture they know, from language they know.”

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She warns them it’s not going to be easy, but tells them “it’s a chance at a better life” than what they’ve been experiencing until now.

And while they have to go through interviews in order to apply to go to Canada, refugees have their own questions for officials.

“Some of them are more practical questions. Some of them are a little bit heartbreaking,” says Gall. That includes questions about whether Canadians are nice.

She said many of them are aware of the “mixed reaction” to the movement of refugees around the world. Still, Gall says, they’re hopeful.

“It’s very nice to be able to smile and say, ‘It’s nice to have you. Welcome to Canada.'”