Canada has the most progressive refugee system in the Western world and makes its population part of the process.

Its resettlement programme includes a private sponsorship programme, which allows a group of five Canadians to bring a family of four into the country and sponsor them for the first year. This establishes initial social bonds, a faster cultural transfer, and leads to faster integration in the economic market. The private sponsorship programme ensures the integration of refugees into society, as the programme fosters the willingness of the people who want to welcome refugees into their community.

Next to its exemplary private sponsorship programme, Canada has a long-term integrative approach – it naturalises great numbers of refugees – meaning that it allows refugees to become Canadian citizens and enjoy the same rights as the native population. This approach fundamentally differs from European approaches, which often aim for temporary solutions and coexistence. The possibility to plan for the long- term influences every person’s decisions.

Canada may not be taking in enormous numbers of refugees compared to other countries, but it does an exemplary job of caring for the refugees it hosts. The government immediately offers refugees a wide array of opportunities for education, socialisation, financial aid and health care, and assists them in finding a permanent residence. While there are definitely some bureaucratic hurdles, Canada is still able to keep the number of required submission forms and visits with local officials at a relatively low level.

Western countries should adopt Canada’s private sponsorship programme as the best practice in the world.

In details:

• Next to a government sponsorship, it offers a private sponsorship, and a dual sponsorship programme
• The country benefits greatly from giving the population the opportunity to directly help refugees through the private sponsorship
• Refugees in Canada are eligible for numerous financial support programmes
• Canada envisions refugees to be future Canadian citizens and thus has a high naturalisation rate
• Despite being quite a progressive country, xenophobia and negative attitudes towards refugees are on the rise in Canada as well

Voluntary Migration

Canada’s voluntary migration system works on a five-category basis. These are the Skilled Worker programme, the Caregivers programme, the Business programme, the Provincial Nominee programme, and the Family programme.

Forced Migration

Canada has a long history of providing shelter for refugees under the Geneva Convention and has continued to do so in light of the refugee crisis.

In 2016, Canada granted 58,485 people ‘protected person’ status and permanent residency. It also resettled 46,700 refugees that same year. This is the largest number of refugees in a single year and marks a record for Canada. The previous record for resettlement refugee intake in a single year had been in 1980 when Canada accepted 40,271 Indochinese refugees.

Who is Eligible for Asylum?

The Canadian government accepts refugees from outside of Canada as defined by the Geneva Convention. In principle, Canada also allows for family reunifications “but only when refugees can financially support their extended family members”. For people temporarily staying in Canada, an application via the In-Canada Asylum Programme is possible if they have similar reasons for not wanting to return to their home country.

Naturally, Canada’s definition of refugees implies that economic refugees are not eligible for application.

Other people non-eligible for refugee status in Canada include anyone who “[has] been recognised as a convention refugee by another country to which [he or she] can return ... [has] arrived via the Canada-United States border ... [is] not admissible to Canada on security grounds, or because of criminal activity or human rights violations”.

Since the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement is in effect, applying for refugee protection at the US-Canadian border is not an option, as the refugee is required to request protection in the country, they arrived in. However, the exception to this rule is if the person seeking protection at the border has family members who are waiting in Canada, is an unaccompanied minor, holds a valid Canadian visa or is of public interest.

Canada’s Two Refugee Systems.

At its core, the Canadian governmental refugee system con- sists of two programmes:

1. The In-Canada Asylum Program for people “making refugee protection claims from within Canada”.
   2. The Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program for people from outside Canada.

There are two ways to apply for asylum in Canada from outside the Country: the person is either referred by a referral organization, such as the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or is sponsored by a private sponsorship group, whereas the In-Canada Asylum Program protects anyone who is unable to return to his or her home country because he or she is facing “persecution or [is] at risk of torture,” Canada’s main refugee programme is the Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program (HRP).

Coming to Canada as part of the Humanitarian Resettlement Programme usually involves being referred by a referral organization, such as the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). In this case, refugees are financially sponsored by the government after arriving in Canada; however, the Canadian government also offers its citizens the opportunity to sponsor refugees coming to Canada as a part of the Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Programme through private sponsorship.

A private sponsorship group consists of either a community or a group of five or more people over the age of 18, who agree to take responsibility for the resettlement and financial situation of one or more refugees. A sponsorship in this form typically lasts for one year but may last up to three years. In average, private sponsors must raise at least $30,000 for that first year to sponsor a refugee family of four in Canada.

There is also the option of the Blended Visa Office-Referred Program, which supports refugees for a whole year, splitting the cost between the government and a private sponsor.

However, the processing time of a private sponsorship takes much longer than a government programme, with the government programmes taking around 15–20 months and private sponsorships up to 63 months. Because of backlog and these massive processing times for applicants whose applications are still being processed, the federal government set a limit of 1,000 applications on new private sponsorship applications.

Special Programmes.

In cases deserving special attention, the Canadian government sometimes partners with private sponsorship organizations “to resettle refugees with special needs”, a “program called Joint Assistance Sponsorship (JAS)”.

These special needs include “trauma from violence or torture, medical dis- abilities, the effects of systemic discrimination, or a large number of family members” and are taken care of by the sponsorship group, which “helps refugees adjust to life in Canada by providing settlement help and emotional sup- port”. Everything else in terms of “income support ... for food, shelter, clothing and basic household goods” is taken care of by the Canadian government. A programme of this kind runs for “up to 24 months”, depending on the private sponsor, it may even run for “up to 36 months”.

Aside from the Joint Assistance Sponsorship (JAS), the second Canadian resettlement programme designed for special needs is the so-called Urgent Protection Program (UPP), which is designed to “enable Canada to respond to requests by referral organizations ... to provide rapid resettlement for refugees in urgent need of protection”, which includes people facing “refoulement, expulsion, prolonged arbitrary detention or extra-judicial execution” and everyone “facing a real, direct threat to their physical safety, which could result in their being killed or subjected to abduction, rape, sexual abuse, violence or torture”. Cases recognised by this programme are meant to get a decision on their resettlement “within 24–48 hours” and the Canadian government “tries to ensure that these cases are en route to Canada within three to five days of referral”.

Security Screenings.

Before coming to Canada, anyone seeking asylum in the country goes through an obligatory screening process.

Refugees on their way to Canada first need to be registered by the UNHCR, which conducts interviews on “past or current military activities affiliations and other relevant information”. According to the organization, refugees may even be “subject to anti-fraud procedures like iris scanning” Standard screening measures include running the refugee’s file through the databases of the Canadian intelligence services as well as the databases of allied countries. Additionally, refugees wanting to come to Canada “must pass a medical examination” and will be interviewed by a visa official to ensure that the information on the application matches the person that turned it in.

Financial support.

Before coming to Canada, refugees may face a number of expensive bureaucratic procedures and might not be able to afford a plane ticket. To cover these costs, the Canadian government offers the option of taking part in the Immigration Loans Program (ILP). This programme helps to cover “costs of medical examinations abroad; travel documents; and transportation to Canada” as well as “expenses such as rental housing, telephone deposits and work tools”. These loans are “approved according to the applicant’s needs and ability to repay” and paid back with interest.

Government-assisted refugees (GAR) will receive financial support for a full year. Typically, a GAR-family “receives a living allowance between $1,200 and $1,400 a month”, while the amount of money varies greatly in private sponsor- ships, the one-year period is commonplace there as well. After that year, refugee families have to support themselves, how- ever, statistically, only 10 per cent of government-sponsored refugees from Syria manage to find employment within their first year in the country. Compared to that, “about 50 per cent” of privately sponsored Syrian refugees “earned some employment income in the first year”.