Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 18th, 2020

[Fadia Mahmoud, Representative, Centre social d’aide aux immigrants]

Thank you so much for giving the Centre social d'aide aux immigrants the opportunity to participate in the study being prepared by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration concerning the impact of COVID-19 on the immigration system.

I'm going to begin with the family reunification, international students and asylum seekers.

My first point is on application backlogs and processing times for different streams of family reunification and [Inaudible—Editor] timely reunification of loved ones as denial of temporary resident visas because of paragraph 179(b) of the immigration and refugee protection regulations and the ongoing closures of the visa application centres.

As a representative of a community centre, I will first to go directly to an example. Our client is a Canadian citizen named Madam Karima Ibrahim, who got married in 2012 to a Palestinian husband in Cairo. She thought that she could bring him to live with her but up until now, he has be unable to obtain even a TRV. Madam Karima submitted a spousal sponsorship application in 2012 and it was refused in the embassy in Cairo in 2012. She appealed the decision, but the appeal was refused—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Sorry for interrupting. I think we are having some echo in the translation.

Clerk, is it possible to check?

[The Clerk]

The interpreters advise me that the quality of the audio is very low. I'll speak with an IT ambassador and see if we have a solution to suggest. One moment, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Is it possible that if she turned her video off, it would be better?

[The Clerk]

Yes, we can attempt this of course.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Madam Mahmoud, can you try turning your video off? Maybe the sound quality will be better.

[Fadia Mahmoud]

Okay, sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Can you say a few sentences so that we can check if this interpretation is getting that?

[Fadia Mahmoud]

Yes.

I just would like to continue on the situation of my client.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Are we good now? Is that better?

[The Clerk]

No. The sound quality has not improved, regrettably.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Okay.

[The Clerk]

Madam Mahmoud, could you please speak just as clearly and perhaps a bit more forcefully into the microphone just to increase the volume?

[Fadia Mahmoud]

Yes. Is it better now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Okay. We can start.

Please resume.

[Fadia Mahmoud]

I was just talking about Madam Karima, who was refused in the embassy in Cairo in 2012. She appealed the decision. The appeal was refused in 2014. Because of inadmissibility, she couldn't submit a new application for two years.

In 2017, her husband applied for a TRV. His request was refused under paragraph 179(b). He reapplied in 2019, and he was refused for the same reason.

In 2020, he applied for a TRV under the exceptions issued by the Canadian government concerning immediate family members. Madam Karima also applied for spousal sponsorship. The last message from the embassy was that there are long delays in the processing time.

It's important to mention the humanitarian and emotional situation of the family. Madam Karima doesn't have family members in Canada and lives on Canadian time. He spends hours with her on the phone every day. They are trying to live as a family, spending time together, sharing projects, and sharing emotions and their fears regarding COVID-19 and isolation.

For four months, Madam Karima hasn't gone outside her house. The only one who has broken her isolation is her husband, overseas on the phone. Also, it's important to mention that she lost her mother in the COVID period, and again, she was alone, just with the faraway husband.

I would also like to mention a very personal question that I asked her. I asked, “Are you able to continue like that?” She said, “I will never give him up because I love him.”

Madam Chair and the committee, whatever the fears and uncertainty of immigration officers are, I think 10 years of daily suffering is enough to convince immigration that the will of a Canadian citizen to live with her husband is more important now. It's more important to this lady, after she also lost the opportunity to be a mother while waiting for her husband to join her in her country....

If you would like to have more details about the situation of Madam Karima, she is angry also and is ready to provide everything. We recommend that special committees deal with such cases not just as normal cases.

Also, a very important point in your study are the international students. I will summarize the problem we deal with—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Madam Mahmoud. Your time is up. If there is anything you would like to provide to the committee, you can also send a written submission.

We will have to move to our round of questioning.

We will start with Ms. Dancho.

Ms. Dancho, you have six minutes. The floor is yours, please.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a few questions for Mr. Holthe.

Mr. Holthe, my understanding in that your law firm represents Derek and Emilie Muth. Is that correct?

[Mark Holthe]

Yes, on a pro bono basis.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Okay. I have a few questions about their case, and I'm hoping to provide some clarity to the committee on their experiences.

For the committee's background—and I'll allow you to go into further detail—Derek and Emilie have been in the process for the last number of years of adopting baby Zoe from Nigeria, who has significant health challenges and has faced life-threatening illness. It is my understanding that they've been stranded in Barbados for almost a year, trying to get citizenship to get her into the country. They've had a nightmare of an experience dealing with IRCC.

Can you lead us through that experience and what it's been like—from your point of view—for them?

[Mark Holthe]

The few minutes I have will not do it justice. The reality is that they had a lot of problems with getting the adoption through, and they had accomplished everything they needed to do with the government in Nigeria. Because of Zoe's health conditions and the lack of proper medical facilities in Nigeria, they had to move out of the country before everything was finalized. They tried to get their applications through, as a couple of other couples had, but for whatever reason—and I think we've got a pretty good idea now—it was put on the back shelf, so they were stuck. Part one of the adoption, their part, was completed on October 20, 2019, and then after that there was nothing from IRCC.

They have been doing everything they can to try to come here. They ended up having to go to Barbados, because it was the only country that would take both a Nigerian citizen and a Canadian citizen and have adequate health care—actually, I should say, hospital availability of medical care. I say this because Zoe suffers from sickle cell anemia, and even when they were in Nigeria, she would have died if it weren't for the fact that Emilie was a nurse. That had led them, as well, to why they wanted to select a child with medical concerns. Derek just happened to have the right blood type. She had an infection and went septic. He was able to be there to give her blood, and then they both ended up with malaria in the process. That led them to realize that they needed to leave. Everything was completed with the Nigerian government, so it wasn't a problem. They went to Barbados, and they've been stuck there since December 2019, trying to access every avenue possible.

Finally, two days ago, their grant of citizenship—this isn't a sponsorship; this is a grant of citizenship—was approved. There really should have been no reason for IRCC to delay this other than allegations that maybe it happened too quickly.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

When did IRCC first learn of Zoe's urgent medical needs?

[Mark Holthe]

All of that was laid out right from the beginning. There was no mystery about it. Right from the beginning, the family was selected on the basis that they were going to be seeking to be placed with a child who had serious medical conditions, so it was never a mystery to anyone in the process. That's what's so heart-wrenching about it. The best interests of Zoe, as a child, were not anywhere on the radar throughout the processing of this.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

My understanding is the Muth family was in Barbados...it would have been a year coming up to December, and they went at least seven months without a single piece of correspondence being returned to them from IRCC, and they got so desperate that they essentially had to expose their private life to the media to get some attention on their case. They were running down the clock on when they would be kicked out of Barbados and essentially, from my understanding, having to perhaps leave their adopted daughter there without her citizenship. Did you see a change in the government's response when this went public?

[Mark Holthe]

That's a question I think anybody could answer. To a large extent our federal policy, when it comes to immigration, is driven by public shaming. No one's to be blamed for this specifically—no particular party. This is just the reality of the situation. In their case, absolutely, like every other situation we've had, when you try to exhaust every single avenue—and understand they tried for almost 10 months to go through the proper channels—reaching out repeatedly to the visa office, all of those things—in the end it was finally a matter of going to CBC on September 23. They approached the minister. They approached everyone, and for a variety of reasons, both within and outside the control of the department, they weren't able to get any forward movement, and Zoe had serious medical concerns. The September CBC article is what kick-started.... Global Affairs started keeping them updated, the GoFundMe campaign, the petitions.... I looked today, and over 38,000 were there.