A mother of three children currently in a refugee camp who was supposed to be moving to Halifax is now stranded due to the ongoing war in Sudan.
On May 3, the Open Harbour Refugee Association posted on Facebook that it had received information that the airport in Khartoum, Sudan, was officially closed. The family, originally from Eritrea, has been living in a refugee camp in Kassala, Sudan, and their original arrival date in Halifax would have been May 25.
Marie Thompson, co-chair of the association, said it hasn’t been in a situation like this before.
“We’re all in a kind of limbo because we really want to continue to be a port of refuge for them. Unless the war, I suppose, gets worse or the federal government suspends their status, I don’t really know what to expect,” Thompson said.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had the family on a list, where they were matched with the association to sponsor them. Open Harbour Refugee Association (OHRA) had an apartment secured for the family, but after receiving the news, it had to let it go.
This would have been the association’s sixth sponsorship.
Explanation
Thompson explained the selection process and what a sponsorship does. The way a family or individual is selected is the United Nations provides IRCC with a list of people who are considered vulnerable and in need of special consideration. “All refugees are vulnerable,” Thompson said.
The individuals from the list can come from all over the world and the UN identifies eight to 10 people. OHRA then has to prove it is able to support half of the selected refugee income for a year and the federal government would be responsible for the other half.
“The total amount is really like social assistance rates, so it’s really not an easy thing to do — especially since with inflation, and the government hasn’t raised its level of financing,” Thompson said.
OHRA was able to raise enough and was able to sponsor the family. But it might have to switch sponsorships with someone else if the situation doesn’t change. It potentially might take a year or two for the family to leave.
“They’re refugees for good reason. They’re in dangerous situations and it’s always difficult to know what to expect,” she said.
Even after being paired with a refugee, organizations like OHRA need to be matched with a sponsorship agreement holder. In this case, the Universalist Unitarian Church of Halifax, does a lot of refugee sponsorships.
Refugee Sponsorship
Marilyn Shinyei, the refugee program coordinator at the church, is a sponsorship agreement holder. There are around 135 sponsorship agreement holders in Canada who are authorized by the IRCC.
IRCC then allots spaces to offer to refugees each year which can be given to local sponsors, whether they be constituent groups or co-sponsors. The sponsorship agreement holder would submit the application after the sponsor made sure it was prepared correctly and reviewed.
“When the newcomer arrives, our responsibility is also to monitor their first 12 months in Canada to make sure that everything that they’ve been promised is happening,” Shinyei said.
She said the church has been asking for 125 spaces each year. Due to the pandemic, many of those refugees have not yet arrived.
“So we’re looking at a backlog right now for 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 of over 250 people that aren’t here, yet that we’ve applied for.”
For Shinyei and the church, she calls this “a crisis every day.”
Shinyei is also a member of the Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders Association and has been lobbying the IRCC to add the principle of additionality. She said this would mean that when one crisis happens, you wouldn’t just focus on the refugees coming out of that one country and stop helping other refugees in another crisis.
“There needs to be equity in the process,” Shinyei said.
IRCC said in an email, “Based on the 2023–2025 Immigration Levels Plan, IRCC aims to welcome over 144,000 refugees, including over 83,500 privately sponsored refugees, in the next 3 years. ”
Despite the faults of the system, being able to help refugees settle into their new homes is something Shinyei is happy about.
“We feel with a lot of our newcomers that they become family to us or we become family to them.”
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