Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a fantastic opportunity to appear before the committee and offer some comments and thoughts. I'll present some comments and thoughts on policy, and then my colleague Rosa Baum will touch also on some implications for Canadian policy.
Let me open by saying that we recognize that there's a legitimate political debate as to the number of immigrants and refugees that Canada should accept. What we say today should not be taken to be a comment on that debate. Our present concern is looking more at the general causes of immigration and determining whether the procedures in place are fair and efficient, and whether they sufficiently cover the most vulnerable groups. I'll be speaking somewhat from some of our experience working in the Middle East and particularly Iraq, although some of the expertise of our members extends to Latin America and other regions.
The facts are as follows. Syrian and Iraqi refugees, particularly religious minorities, hesitate or refuse to register with UNHCR and other agencies for fear of reprisals. Less than 1% of each minority community in Syria has registered with refugee agencies in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, which means either they are not migrating despite the particular dangers to them, or they are not registering once they leave.
At a general level, what the research shows is that for a person in a developing country, when their income goes up, so does their likelihood of immigrating. Migration to some degree is something you need to buy, and some of the most vulnerable individuals may be unable to afford it.
What does this tell us? Immigration is at least partly an access problem. These problems are more acute and they're worse for some of the most marginalized communities—small ethno-religious groups, women and LGBTQ individuals.
Broadly we think any perspective needs to distinguish between predisposing factors, which are longer-term issues and divisions, on the one hand and triggering factors on the other hand, such as wars and natural disasters, which combine with these pre-existing factors to instigate migration.
We think we can predict these predisposing factors, but it is not an easy task. For example, in both Iraq and Syria, there is a large level of ethno-religious diversity. Minorities include not just the Kurds and Christians on the one hand, but also Yazidis, Shabak, Turkmen and many others.
Some of the work by our organization focuses on passive versus active sectarianism, which is something we've coined to help us understand these distinctions. Divisions might exist, but they might be passive background characteristics, or they might be the driver of active political divisions and strife. Usually sectarianism becoming active is a good precursor of migration. Likewise, problems faced by women and LGBTQ groups often predate conflicts but flare up in times of turmoil. Data gathering and methodologies to help identify these factors in advance have come a long way, and we've used some of our own tools to identify problems in communities, sometimes at the village or even the neighbourhood level.
What we put today before the committee is that beyond these drivers, there is a question of how accessible immigration structures are to those facing these problems. The question of whether a person migrates and where they migrate to is much more complex than figuring out how vulnerable they are or the particular danger that they're in. Many things affect the decision and many things affect the access that they have, such as the penetration of international bodies such as UNHCR, their individual information and their beliefs, or their closeness to a community in a target country, which we think has actually been a big factor in Canada, where if you have individual members of the community who are willing to sponsor you or otherwise fund you or welcome you to the community, you're that much more likely to want to immigrate or to apply to immigrate. We think these factors are also predictable, and there's space for improving access but also predicting where we think there might be problems with access.
This implies we have a problem, at least in part, of information. We think concerted research can indicate where sectarianism has become active, for example, or where LGBTQ individuals or women might be threatened. Concerted research, we believe, in 2012 or 2013, could probably have revealed that Yazidis were a group in danger because the ISIS threat to them was an offshoot of pre-existing tensions and problems. But these groups often also lack the access and organization to make the most of their migration services so they are the least likely to pop up on the radar of their own accord until it is too late. It is, therefore, for these groups that additional research and proactive looking for information will most ensure visibility, attention and a sufficiently expeditious immigration process.
For Canada, what does this mean? It means, we think, that Canada should ensure that the IRCC has fully developed data analysis and prediction capabilities. We think that they might benefit from working with other branches of government, such as the stabilization and reconstruction task force within Global Affairs. They may be able to help identify immigration needs in vulnerable populations well in advance, if they do this.
We also think that the IRCC should follow stricter data recording requirements. This analysis should be transparent while also safeguarding the privacy of the individuals involved. Ultimately, if there's an impending crisis or potential biases in the way cases are treated within the IRCC, the government and Parliament should be the first to learn about it.
My colleague, Rosa, will now provide some additional comments.