Tamil refugee welcoming
The 492 Tamil refugees arrived by boat and a clamour over bogus claimants flocking to Canada because it’s so easy to get in arose once again.
How about a few facts?
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says there is no upsurge in asylum seekers trying to get into the rich countries of the world.
Analyzing its exhaustive statistics, the UN agency says the numbers of asylum seekers remain stable and that while they did increase in some countries they fell precipitously in others.
Nineteen countries posted increases, 25 countries registered declines. But on average, little change.
Scandinavian countries got the largest number of asylum applications with 51,100 in 2009, an increase of 13 per cent over 2008, the highest upswing in six years.
However, refugee claims fell sharply in southern Europe, in some places, Italy, for example, by as much as 42 per cent.
How about Canada? This country, although commendably ranked third for its acceptance of refugees, saw the number of asylum seekers drop by 10 per cent, mostly due to declining claims from Haiti and Mexico. Germany, on the other hand, recorded a 25-percent increase and France 19 per cent.
Canada has a two-track system for assisting refugees.
Track 1 is a resettlement program for refugees seeking asylum from outside the country. These are often refugees who are safe but stranded in camps. About 20 countries accept 100,000 of these refugees a year and Canada takes 10,000 to 12,000, or about one in 10.
Track 2, the domestic asylum system, provides protection for refugees at risk of torture, cruel or unusual punishment in their homeland and who have fled directly to Canada. This number varies from year to year.
In 2009, about 34,000 such refugees came to Canada.
But to put this in perspective, there were 377,200 such refugees worldwide that year and 343,000 sought asylum in other countries.
Under the system, once a claim is made, a Canadian citizenship and immigration officer determines whether the asylum-seeker is eligible and, if so, refers that claim to the Immigration and Refugee Board for a decision. This is the process the present Tamil refugee claimants now undergo.
So they are being treated in exactly the same fashion as every other refugee.
Another complaint about the Tamil refugees is that they came to Canada and didn’t go to countries closer to their homeland.
But the UN refugee agency’s latest figures show that of the 146,098 refugees now identified as being from Sri Lanka, 126,955 did go to other countries.
In fact, 73,000 — about half — went to India. Tamil refugees seeking asylum are distributed across 57 countries.
So, there is no playing Canada for the patsy.
In fact, RSD Watch [for Refugee Status Determination], an American non-government agency that tracks these arcane statistics, says that based on 2007 numbers, Canada’s rate for recognizing refugee claims was lower than that for the UN High Commission on Refugees.
It says that while Canada’s RSD system is considered one of the best by refugee advocates, it granted recognition to 52 per cent, compared to a rate for the UN High Commission of 79 per cent.
Recognition rates vary according to need, however. Canada recognized 81 per cent of applicants from Afghanistan and 84 per cent from Iran.
The three highest rates were for three of the most dangerous regions on the planet, Somalia at 93 per cent, Eritrea at 94 per cent and Sri Lanka at 92 per cent.
Yet the Canadian Council for Refugees notes that only a small minority of refugees ever make it to the rich countries of the north. In fact, the humanitarian burden falls most heavily upon the poor.
In 2006, for example, Tanzania took in more refugees than Canada, France, Australia, the U.S., Germany, Spain and Japan combined. Canada took in 43,500 refugees in 2006 while Chad, Kenya, Thailand, Iran, Jordan and Syria each took in 250,000.
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