Okay. First of all, good afternoon to all of you. I am here, and I'm Makai Aref. I would like to thank the committee on citizenship and immigration for allowing me the opportunity to come here today to talk about the immigrant spousal sponsorship program.
I am here today not to express my personal views on this issue but to talk about the experiences of the community of immigrant women and families that I have been working with for the last 13 years at the Afghan Women’s Centre in Montreal.
My hope today is to communicate to you their concerns and their experiences on this topic. As there is a question period during which I will be happy to address any topic, I will just touch very briefly now on some of the major issues that women face, both when they are sponsored by a spouse here and when they sponsor spouses from other countries.
I would first like to note that while the majority of our clients at the Afghan Women’s Centre are from Afghanistan, we do aid women from many other immigrant communities, for example, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, and India. All of the issues that I raise here, in talking about Afghanistan, apply to them as well.
From the cases and clients that I have worked with in the last 13 years, I know that the victimization of women who have been sponsored by spouses living in Canada arises from the following sponsorship situations. Almost all of the women who are sponsored from Afghanistan by spouses are financially dependent upon their husbands. They cannot speak French or English and they lack the skills needed to get a job in Canada. As newcomers, these women do not have social support systems outside of their husbands and in-laws in Canada.
Men travel to Afghanistan and marry girls much younger than they are. Within our immigrant community we have many cases of men in their fifties, sixties, and seventies travelling to Afghanistan and marrying teenaged girls. Unfortunately, this is a conscious decision by these individuals, who marry girls this young with the belief that once they come to Canada, they can be easily controlled.
Women are pressured and forced into marriages with men in Canada by their families. Afghanistan is a war-torn country where many people suffer from poverty. There is a belief there that if a daughter married a man who lives in Canada or the United States or Europe, the daughter can help the family financially later on.
Women and their families are given false information by men and their families before the marriage. They are given false information about the ages of men, their marital state, their physical health, their economic situation, and even their characters. We have many clients at the centre who came to Canada and found out that the man they had married already had other wives and children. Some found out that their husbands had psychological or physical illnesses that they were not aware of.
The results of these situations are that many women face social isolation, economic difficulties, and verbal and/or physical abuse, and because of their lack of job skills and knowledge of their rights and the resources available to them, they are trapped in these situations.
Some women refuse to seek help, even if help is offered, because of cultural issues. Others may refuse to leave abusive situations because they know that they do not have the economic means to support themselves and their children. There is also a great gap in services available to them in their language. They cannot communicate their situation to social workers, lawyers, and the police in English and French, and are thus barred from those avenues of aid.
While the immigration spousal sponsorship program is used by many people to sponsor spouses whom they live with very happily, I know, through my work, that it can also be used to create marriages, the results of which are too many women and young girls living in unspeakably horrific conditions of mental and physical abuse and economic and social oppression. It is my great hope that the result of our discussions today will lead to progress in helping them reclaim their voices, their hopes and dreams, and their lives.
Thank you.