Mr. Speaker, let me start by saying to my friend that back in 1956 there was a similar debate taking place and it was about Hungarian refugees. I was one of the refugees who ended up coming to this country in 1957. So it does have a great deal of personal resonance with me.
We are making every effort to facilitate family reunification in the present situation. I am happy to be able to tell the hon. member that 53 refugees from Kosovo have already arrived in Canada to be reunited with their families. Others will be arriving over the next few weeks.
To date, under a special system we have put in place to fast track the processing of family reunification applications, we have received 158 applications from Canadians or Canadian residents with relatives over there. Those applications involve 974 people.
CIC has put the following system in place to handle the applications to bring over Kosovar refugees who have relatives in Canada.
The relative identification form, RIF, has been developed by Citizenship and Immigration Canada to assist the department in tracking and monitoring cases. It will also help to identify relatives of Canadian residents who may be eligible for resettlement in Canada.
For individuals living in Canada with relatives from Kosovo who are in Macedonia or Albania, they must call the Kosovo hotline at 1-888-410-0009, toll free, to register their request. The hotline will either complete the RIF on the caller's behalf or provide the caller with the RIF to complete themselves and they must then fax it to the hot fax at 1-877-883-8834.
Information gathered from the RIFs will be forwarded to various organizations by CIC to assist in the processing.
We currently have five visa officers in Macedonia and four in Albania. Once the refugees have been located, CIC visa officers will interview them and if the refugees wish, they will be fast tracked into Canada.
Our goal is to reunite these families within two weeks after the family members have been located. This timeframe may vary depending on various formalities and movement restrictions imposed by local authorities.
Some of the refugees are in camps. Some are being temporarily sheltered by host families, sometimes in very remote locations. Some may even be in other countries. Locating these individuals—