The National Council of Canadian Muslims is calling on the federal government to remove a cap on the number of Palestinians who can flee violence in the Gaza Strip with their Canadian relatives.
A special large family program for people in the Gaza Strip is scheduled to start next week. Palestinian Canadians have petitioned for months for federal help to rescue their loved ones from the Israeli-Hamas war.
The program provides visas for up to 1,000 Palestinians to seek refuge in Canada for three years, provided their families are willing to support them financially during that time.
When Immigration Minister Mark Miller announced the plan last month, he said it was not clear how many people would benefit, but it would likely be “a few hundred people.”
A week later, the department issued written policy regarding the program.
This means Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada will stop accepting new applications after the first 1,000 applications have been received and processed, or after one year has passed.
The Canadian Muslim Council, a national advocacy group, said it has already contacted more than 1,000 people who have contacted them asking to have their families evacuated from Gaza.
“There should be no cap,” said Usman Quick, the group’s communications director.
Matthew Krupovich, a spokesperson for the Department of Immigration, said in an emailed statement Tuesday that the cap “recognizes the instability on the ground and the difficulties that Canada and like-minded countries are having in moving people from Gaza to Egypt.” It has been taken into consideration.”
Miller said last month that ensuring safe entry and exit from the Palestinian territories remains extremely difficult. Ottawa has no control over who can cross the tightly controlled Rafah border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt at any time, and even removing Canadians from the combat zone is a slow and difficult process. It turns out that.
Yamina Ansari, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, said she believes the cap vastly underestimates the number of people who need help.
Mr. Ansari advocated for the policy as part of a special group of immigration lawyers called the Gaza Family Reunification Project.
“We know of over 1,000 applicants in this group of lawyers alone,” Ansari said, calling the cap “atrocious.”
The Gaza Strip has been under near-constant shelling since October 7, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,200 people in Israel and taking about 240 hostages.
Almost immediately, Israel launched retaliatory attacks in Hamas-held areas, killing more than 21,900 Palestinians, according to local authorities.
According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, two-thirds of the Palestinian victims are women and children. Canadians with family in the area say they are scared for their loved ones who are running out of shelter.
Lawyer says cap will lead to ‘battle royale’ over visas
Ansari said she expects the limited number of applications to fill up quickly and what she calls a “battle royale” for the scarce visas.
“The question is, let me be clear, will your family live or die?” Ansari said.
She said she had been fielding calls throughout the holidays from desperate families hoping their loved ones would live long enough to get visas for the program’s start on January 9.
Some of those conversations were difficult, Ansari said. She had to explain that not everyone in her family could leave the house, she said. Even if families are able to cross the border, they will have to decide whether to leave their loved ones behind.
“This piece of paper may be meaningless. We may not be able to walk away from this conflict,” Ansari said.
That is why the NCCM said it called for a ceasefire to stop the violence.
Quick said most Gazans don’t want to leave and want to know that if they seek refuge in Canada, they have the right to return home once the conflict ends.