refugee

Friday March 3, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 3, 2023

Bused out of Quebec, francophone asylum seekers struggle to get medical services

Over the phone, the woman’s voice is regretful but hurried — she says she’s sorry, but if the French-speaking migrant on the other end of the line cannot find someone to translate English, the doctor won’t see him for the medical exam he needs in order to claim asylum in Canada.

March 24, 2022

CBC News obtained a recording of the phone conversation the man says took place Wednesday in Niagara Falls, Ont. 

“It’s not possible to speak with the doctor if you can’t speak English,” the woman tells him in French. “You have to find someone at your hotel to help you.” 

“I don’t know anyone here,” Guirlin — whose last name CBC News has agreed to withhold because of his precarious immigration status — replies.

Guirlin and his family are among the more than 5,500 asylum seekers who have been bused by Canada’s government from Quebec’s border with the U.S. to cities in Ontario, including Windsor, Cornwall and Niagara Falls. 

They are also among a number of those — mostly francophones from Haiti or countries in Africa — for whom the transfer happened against their wishes since they could not afford to find a place to stay immediately. Their plan all along was to live in Quebec.

February 17, 2023

Guirlin, his wife, who is six months pregnant, and their four-year-old son ended up in Niagara Falls on Feb. 14. Originally from Haiti, the family had been struggling to make ends meet in Brazil, when they decided to travel north through a dozen countries to make their way to Canada. 

When they arrived on Feb. 11 via Roxham Road, the popular irregular border crossing south of Montreal, they were asked by immigration officers where they planned to live in Canada.

“I said we want to stay in Montreal because I don’t speak English and my wife doesn’t either, and she needs to have medical appointments for the pregnancy,” Guirlin said in a phone interview Thursday. 

He says they were told in the following days there was no space for them in Montreal, and that they were being sent to Ontario. They boarded a bus with roughly 40 other asylum seekers from a number of other countries last Tuesday. For now, the government has put them up in a hotel. (CBC) 

 

Thursday August 18, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday August 18, 2022

Canada pledged to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees, yet only 17,000 have made it

As anniversaries go, it’s not a happy one.

July 15, 2021

One year ago this week, the Canadian government announced it had suspended operations at its embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. And one year ago this week, President Joe Biden confirmed the U.S. would complete its withdrawal from the country.

Two weeks later, the last American soldier left Afghanistan, and the Taliban takeover was complete. Despite assurances from the Taliban that the rights of all Afghans, including women and children, would be protected, citizens have experienced a dramatic decline in their rights, freedoms and quality of life.

According to a report from the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, human rights violations have escalated rapidly under the Taliban. Journalists, protesters and civil society activists have been arrested, and the report documents 160 extrajudicial killings, 56 cases of torture and 217 instances of cruel and inhumane punishments.

Perhaps the most visible curtailment of human rights involves those who are now, once again, invisible: Women and girls. Under Taliban rule, women and girls “have progressively had their rights to fully participate in education, the workplace and other aspects of public and daily life restricted and in many cases completely taken away.”

Heather Barr, associate director of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, recently said on CTV National News: “Women have had all of their rights stripped away from them, and girls as well.”