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©Gregory James,
November 2006 The situation of Iraqi refugees exposes many of the inequities of Canada refugee process. Canada, which portrays itself as a humanitarian country, goes to considerable lengths to frustrate the ability of Iraqis, and others, to find security in Canada. In order to completely comply with Canadian law, a person seeking Canada’s protection would have to make their refugee claim at a Canadian visa office abroad. Canadian visa offices abroad are notoriously unsympathetic to refugee claims. First, the visa offices are restricted by a very low world-wide refugee quota (referred to as a target) for refugees. Visa offices have limited resources and are told to apply those resources in certain ways. The Damascus visa office is responsible for cases originating in Iraq, and also in Jordan and Syria -- places where displaced Iraqis typically find themselves. But it is already one of the slowest visa offices in the world. If they started accepting large numbers of refugees this would require a redistribution of their resources and considerably disrupt their already creaky work plan. Second, visa offices are not independent decision makers. They are part of a larger bureaucracy located in Canadian embassies and as such are influenced, directly or indirectly, by Canadian foreign policy concerns. Accepting the legitimacy of Iraqi refugee claims might be seen as a slap in the face to US policy in Iraq. I want to emphasize that I have no proof that anyone has issued a directive saying that Iraqi refugees should not be accepted. But in an environment that recognizes the US as our most important ally, we should not be surprised if people working in Canadian embassies naturally seek to avoid embarrassing the United States. Third, visa officers also have to ask whether or not there is a reasonable chance of resettlement in the region. At first blush this question makes enormous sense. Most refugees themselves would prefer to go home. It is much preferable to re-settle people back to their homes as soon as possible, rather than further disrupting their lives by sending them to a foreign country. But this question requires visa officers to predict the future, which is a difficult thing to do. The Damascus office has previously accepted Donald Rumsfeld’s reassurances and rejected refugee claims on the basis that the situation in Iraq would soon settle down and people could go home. This prediction has proven to be horribly wrong. Fourth, refugee claimants at visa offices do not usually have any assistance with their applications. They are distressed, living in difficult circumstances, unfamiliar with the rules, with varying degrees of sophistication and language skills, and yet they are expected to file sophisticated, detailed, well documented, and well proven applications. They have the burden of establishing their own case. If they don’t do it just right, the visa officer can reject the application in a fairly summary fashion. Fifth, visa officers have a wide variety of responsibilities, and are not specialists in refugee determination, which is a complicated matter. So they are more prone to making mistakes. Sixth, visa officer decisions are not subject to meaningful review. There is no meaningful corrective mechanism in the process. Visa officer’s managers are part of the same culture and are themselves extremely busy. Such cases are almost never appealed because claimants do not know the appeal process, the appeal process is located in Canada and so out of reach of most of them, and they have no financial resources to access the appeal process in any event. So visa officers can go on making poor decisions with little or no consequence or correction. Displaced people are desperate people. And word travels fast among desperate people. It takes them little time to recognize the general futility of applying for refugee status at a Canadian visa office. So they start to look for other means. There is one exception, refugees identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees can be accepted by the Canadian government. But this is a very small number. The key feature of this option is that it takes the refugee determination out of the hands of the visa officers. UNHCR takes care of that. This has the dual benefits of reducing the visa office’s work, and reducing the applicant’s exposure to the visa office. Can displaced people come through Canada’s “regular” immigration stream? No. I will mention only two of the many reasons why this is not a viable option. First, in the last twelve months cases decided by the visa office in Damascus were, on average, filed 63 months ago. That is over five years of waiting. Second, applicants in the “regular” immigration stream have to show that they have the funds necessary to establish themselves in Canada. De we really expect displaced people to wait so long, or to have such funds? They are spending what little money they have on daily survival, and in the vast majority of cases it will disappear long before 63 months expires Canadians have a hard-earned reputation for humanitarian action. This is a reputation that has to be earned, and not taken for granted. When taken for granted it is often used as a justification for closing doors rather than opening them. It is amazing how many people tout Canada’s humanitarian reputation, but choose the word “doormat” when discussing Canada’s refugee policy. If our humanitarian tradition is truly part of our Canadian identity, we should take care that in discussing immigration policy, as in other fields, we continue to earn our humanitarian reputation.
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