Palestinian Quebecers scramble to get families to Canada as Gaza death toll climbs
‘Every day, every hour matters,’ says Canadian citizen trying to bring relatives to safety
Months after fleeing the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, Mohammed-sharif Alghusain is rebuilding his life on Montreal's South Shore. Alghusain is applying for jobs while his two daughters are back in school. One of the girls, a diabetic, is finally getting the insulin she needs.
As a Canadian citizen, he was able to cross over into Egypt and get a flight to Montreal. Since then, the death toll in Gaza has risen past 25,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. A report by UN Women says that most of the dead — 70 per cent — are women and children.
Now, Alghusain is scrambling to bring his parents and three sisters in Gaza to safety in Canada as part of Ottawa's temporary residency program for family members of Palestinian Canadians.
On Jan. 9, the federal government launched the special immigration measures allowing 1,000 family members to move here for three years.
It says applicants are required to have up-to-date passports and results of biometric tests, such as fingerprints and photos for facial recognition. They must also show they will be supported by a Canadian citizen or permanent resident for a year.
But while Palestinian Quebecers race to get their loved ones to safety, people like Alghusain, as well as some immigration lawyers and organizations that support refugees, say Ottawa's program is too restrictive and comes too late.
Racing to reunite
Alghusain says the application process is confusing, and he fears potentially deadly delays.
"Every day matters, every hour matters because you never know what's going to happen tomorrow or the next hour," he said.
Alghusain says some of the documents the application asks for — such as passports and identification numbers — may seem basic but are very difficult for people to get together in a conflict zone.
He also questions how people will be able to cross into Egypt to complete the biometric tests needed to complete the application if Israel and Egypt don't allow them to leave.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told CBC it's asking Gaza migrant applicants for detailed information because it's incapable of conducting biometric tests in Gaza before migrants cross into Egypt through the Rafah Gate.
"IRCC understands that people may not have access to all the required documents," it said in a statement, adding it will be flexible where possible.
Palestinian Quebecer Ayman Oweida, spends his days researching ways to extend the lives of cancer patients and teaching at Université de Sherbrooke. Lately, however, he has been busy trying to help relatives escape Gaza.
Since Israeli airstrikes began in October, Oweida's elderly aunts and uncles have fled their homes and taken shelter under the same roof as dozens of others — 70 altogether for a home that would normally house 10 people.
Some of his cousins, meanwhile, are planning on leaving the shelter of the school they have been taking refuge in to go live in tents in the south — further away from encroaching tanks.
Nutritious food and medicine have become harder to come by, leaving his family there scrambling to find sustenance.
"My cousin's wife has multiple sclerosis and she needs medicine and she hasn't had her medicine for two weeks now," he said.
According to the UN, about 1.9 million civilians — 85 per cent of Gaza's population — have been "forcibly displaced amid Israel's operations," with 60 per cent of homes destroyed. The UN also says a quarter of the population is starving and on the brink of famine. In November, the agency first sounded the alarm that Palestinians in the strip were at risk of genocide.
At the Hague, the International Court of Justice is currently reviewing South Africa's accusation of genocide. The presiding judge said the court would come to a ruling on provisional measures "as soon as possible."
Oweida started the application process as soon as the program was launched, but gathering, translating and sending the necessary documents has been "painful" and "difficult," he said. Now, he's waiting to hear back from the federal government to move on to the next step of the application process.
In addition to family, Oweida is also trying to help academics and students make their way to Canada, collecting resumés that he plans to send to Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller. So far, he says he has collected over 40 resumés.
Also hailing from Gaza, Omar Aljubairi moved to Sherbrooke, Que., in 2022 to pursue his graduate studies. In recent days, he watched video footage of the university he used to lecture at in Gaza get demolished.
Aljubairi says several family members have been killed, including relatives who were fleeing on what was supposed to be a safe route and killed in an air strike — one of them a two-year-old infant.
As a temporary resident, he can't bring over family members from Gaza, but he is helping other family members living in Canada who are permanent residents do just that. However, although he has begun gathering information for applications, he hasn't been able to contact those family members in Gaza for over a week.
"It's so difficult to not even be able to reach them because right now we don't even know if they are alive," he said.
Refugee organization: requirements 'intrusive','onerous'
Gauri Sreenivasan, the co-executive director for the Canadian Council for Refugees, calls the program a welcome policy change, but one with "extremely problematic" requirements.
Sreenivasan also describes the financial support required from Canadian sponsors as "onerous" and the amount of information applicants need to provide — such as email addresses, social media accounts, employment histories and even physical scars — as "unprecedented" and "intrusive."
"The Canadian government's message is these are civilians fleeing war and yet the level of paperwork required is doing nothing to expedite their return to safety," she said.
Sreenivasan adds that Canada isn't being as generous with Palestinians as it has been with other peoples fleeing war, comparing the financial support needed for this program to those set up for Ukrainians, where caps were set at 200,000, processing fees were waived, and anchor family relatives in Canada weren't required.
She also takes issue with Minister Miller's comments earlier this month when he defended the program's security requirements by saying "I don't think Canadians would forgive us if we let in someone that was not the person we wanted to be, and turned out to be a terrorist."
Such language and framing casts civilian Palestinians fleeing for their lives as unwelcome terrorists, Sreenivasan says.
"That is a kind of racism against Palestinian people that is unacceptable, and it promotes divisiveness."
Long overdue, lawyer says
Immigration and refugee lawyer Marie-Odile Marcotte says she's "outraged" but "not surprised" at how long it has taken Canada to roll out the program.
She says when Russian attacked Ukraine Canada quickly announced a program to take in refugees fleeing the war.
According to Marcotte, the difference may stem from the fact that Palestinians are largely Muslim and are not white.
Marcotte says the politics surrounding Canada's stance on the conflict may have complicated efforts to help people get to safety, and Palestinians trying to reunite with families in Quebec may face "longer delays and additional hurdles" than elsewhere in Canada.
WATCH | Palestinian man explains how he escaped Gaza:
'We feel discriminated against'
Oweida too feels let down and angry with the Canadian government, which he says hasn't done enough to get a ceasefire.
"We feel discriminated against when we compare ourselves as a community of Gazans or Palestinians to other communities, such as what happened in Ukraine or Afghanistan," he said.
"At such a desperate time, how could you put a cap on people who have relatives in Gaza and how many they can bring here?"
Alghusain agrees. "This is not the way that governments should act. It's not a lineup and who comes first gets served first," he said, adding that politics aside, Canada needs to do more to protect human life.
"We really hope as Canadians, as human beings, for Canada to stand with the people that are dying at the moment, that are starving from the lack of food, lack of water, lack of medication, lack of hospitalization."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
with files from Raffy Boudjikanian.