Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for the opportunity to present our concerns as a sponsorship agreement holder with the private sponsorship program.
International Christian Voice, or ICV, is a registered, non-profit charitable human rights organization. Our core work is to assist individuals and families who have fled religious persecution and are stranded in third countries with little or no hope.
My family and I have personally suffered from religious persecution. My youngest brother, Shahbaz Bhatti, was the only Christian federal minister in the Government of Pakistan and was assassinated by religious extremists in March 2011.
Since 2016, ICV has submitted more than 100 sponsorship applications. The average waiting time for the completion of the sponsorship process has been three years or more. I want to give you an example.
One refugee family fled from their homeland due to religious persecution, in 2013, to Thailand. ICV submitted their file in April 2017. The family was called for an interview in September 2019. The case was refused in March 2020. The head of the family fell into depression and was involved in an accident in which he was killed. He left behind a young wife and four daughters. After the judicial review, upon reapplying, their application was accepted and his family came to Canada this year. The family suffered for nine years and lost the head of the family.
Here are our concerns.
Application backlogs and processing times are the major concern for the sponsorship agreement holders and for the refugees and asylum seekers, who continue to suffer while waiting for the processing of approvals. In our experience, most of the refugees and asylum seekers who have been persecuted for their faith are from low-income backgrounds, have very little education and lack effective communication skills. They are at a significant disadvantage when trying to effectively share their stories of persecution with the visa officers, which can lead to the refusal of their applications.
It appears that a lack of sufficient human resources may be the root cause of the delays today. Due to unexpected political crises, wars and natural disasters around the world, we see that the same human resources handling immigration cases are pulled to respond to the new crises. These delays put on hold the applications of those who are waiting their turn and are causing a massive backlog.
With regard to recommendations, we strongly request that a dedicated number of staff be appointed to handle PSR applications and other routine immigration activities. Pulling away resources or adding an additional workload on the staff should be prevented.
Visa officials should be introduced to and made reasonably aware of the culture, demographics and political and religious conflicts of the countries where refugees are coming from. Video recordings of interviews have verified that there are incorrect interpretations of conversations during interviews between visa officers and applicants.
We are grateful to the Canadian government for playing an important role on the world stage to assist refugees and asylum seekers. However, we, as sponsorship agreement holders, are facing many challenges with our applications, which is causing prolonged suffering and pain for those we are trying to help.
We would welcome a greater initiative by the government to address these issues as soon as possible. Thank you.