My name is Jalal Saeed. I am working with the Iraqi Federation of Refugees. Also I am a member of the Canadian Council for Refugees. I am working with the Iraqi Canadian Society too.
Actually, I just came back last week from Iraq.
By the way, I get the shakes. I haven't presented too much stuff. There was supposed to be somebody coming to take my place. He was to come today, but he didn't come. Finally, I came just to listen and to say something at our meeting.
Our organization was established in 1991 during the time of Saddam Hussein, when the first war happened. All the Iraqi Kurds escaped to the mountains. There were almost three million people. At that time our organization was started in order to help people. When the Iraqis were starting to escape to Europe or to Canada, our organization was started in order to help the Iraqi refugees in those countries.
I came to Canada as a refugee in 1998. At that time I established this organization and started to sponsor under private sponsorship in Canada. We brought over 100 people to Canada under private sponsorship, by groups of five or by those organizations that were helping under private sponsorship, like the Canadian Lutheran Church and the Canadian Reform Church and the other organizations.
This is my question. Until 2003 the application process was very fast. During one year everybody got the right answer or they couldn't come to Canada during the right time. But after 2003 when there were the big happenings in Iraq with the United States, the applications have taken so long. Even in Canada, the application process, which before was four weeks, now has gone up to eight months or even one year or more. It takes one year just to get the B number from the CIC local. Because this has happened, we stopped this process. This is what has happened.
I'm sorry my voice is not very good, but I just want to say what is happening in Iraq, as I came back last week.
If you ask anybody in Iraq--I'm not talking about the refugees outside of Iraq in Syria, Jordan, and Turkey, but inside Iraq--everybody wants to get out, but they don't know how. Everybody asks me to please help, but how? From children to seniors, everybody asks for help, but how? We don't know where to start. In Kurdistan at that time, we got help from the Government of England. They deported 60 Kurds from England to Kurdistan. We met the president of the Parliament in Kurdistan about the stuff that happened to the Iraqi Kurd refugees in England, but they didn't have a right answer for us. They said, “They are our people, and we cannot tell them not to come back”. We found out later that everybody got help from the airport by the Kurdish government. This happened in Kurdistan, in Iraq.
I met people from Basra and Kirkuk and so on. Everybody wants to get out. This is happening in Iraq.
I'm sorry, I can't talk too much.