‘Dramatic’ cut to refugee funding

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This article was published 31/03/2017 (3142 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s shifting newcomer landscape has the agencies that help them waiting to see how services will be affected and who is going to pay for them.

After rallying a year ago to welcome an influx of 1,000 Syrian refugees, Friendly Manitoba now faces a soaring number of asylum seekers and a stark reduction in the number of government-assisted refugees.

Manitoba’s largest resettlement agency for government-assisted refugees, Welcome Place, will see an 80 per cent cut in the number of arrivals this year.

“The cut was dramatic,” said Rita Chahal, executive director of Welcome Place, which expects to welcome 114 government-assisted refugees this year compared with an average of 519 a year.

Only 300 government-assisted refugees are expected for the entire province in 2017, said provincial government spokesman David von Meyenfeldt.

The number of people crossing the border from the United States to claim refugee status in Manitoba, meanwhile, was 332 in the first three months of this year compared with 266 for all of last year, said Ghezae Hagos, who helps them at Welcome Place.

The refugee claimants have a legal right to apply for asylum here but there’s no permanent funding or programming to shelter and support them before their Immigration and Refugee Board hearing, says the Manitoba Association of Newcomer Serving Organizations (MANSO).

“As refugee claimants are not eligible for services funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, our service providers will need more resources to support these clients while they await their hearings,” MANSO executive director Vicki Sinclair said by email.

Welcome Place’s primary focus and government funding is for resettling UN Refugee Agency-approved refugees in Winnipeg. For years, and without government funding, the non-profit agency has also provided in-Canada paralegal services to refugee claimants. It could not use any of its federal funding earmarked for helping refugees to help the asylum seekers and had to rely on donations.

This winter, when refugee claimants crossing into Canada on foot started showing up in Emerson with nowhere to go and no place to stay, Welcome Place and its Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council board sent staff to pick them up. Some were taken to Welcome Place housing units in downtown Winnipeg.

When they ran out of room, they took them to the Salvation Army. This week, the Henry Avenue shelter downtown was a temporary home for 55 of the refugee claimants.

This winter’s steady stream of asylum seekers has not slowed to a trickle. From Jan. 1 to March 30, Welcome Place reported the arrival of 332 refugee claimants. At that pace, Manitoba could expect to receive 1,328 by the end of the year.

“So far, the only public funding we’ve had is from the provincial government — $110,000 and the 14 units,” Chahal said at Welcome Place. Last month, the federal government asked Welcome Place to submit a budget plan for helping the asylum seekers but they haven’t had any response yet, she said.

“We’re doing our own fundraising to meet the demand,” Chahal said.

Sinclair with the umbrella group MANSO hopes Manitobans and all levels of government will respond with the same co-ordinated effort that helped the influx of more than 1,000 Syrian refugees who arrived in 2016 — in addition to the arrival of hundreds of other government-assisted and privately sponsored refugees.

“We hope we can build on the close collaboration we saw between all levels of government, the settlement, business and volunteer sectors and the general public in 2016 to ensure that human beings in need of protection do not need to compete for resources,” Sinclair said.

In the meantime, she said members of the public can make donations to ongoing fundraising campaigns, which include helprefugees.ca and openyourhearts.ca.

“As Canadians, we have a humanitarian duty to treat all refugees with respect and dignity, whether they are selected overseas and government-assisted as part of a major resettlement movement, privately sponsored by members of our community, or make their own way to our borders and request asylum in accordance with International Refugee law,” said Sinclair.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca