MacCleans had an interesting article called "Making sense of Canada's Refugee and Immigration Numbers" that I read this morning.
I got the impression from our PM that many refugees just try to take advantage of us. This part caught my attention:
But let’s stick with the government-assisted refugees for a moment. These are refugees that CIC identifies and accepts overseas. When they arrive in Canada, they are permanent residents. The government offers them income support for a short time, based on prevailing welfare rates, wherever they are resettled in the country. Through NGOs (who have already written to Chris Alexander about sudden funding cuts this year), government provides some funding for services, such as language and skills training, to help with resettlement. But most government-assisted refugees have to pay their own freight to get here and to get started in setting up a new household. If they don’t have the money to pay for the medical check, the application fees, the plane ticket (preferably, on a Canadian carrier and only with that carrier’s baggage allowance), or a small lump sum to buy basic necessities, CIC will evaluate them for a loan to cover those costs.
Yeah, you read that right: Save for exceptional cases, we make our government-assisted refugees pay us back the costs we charged to get them here. We give them a grace period during which we don’t charge interest, but we give them a maximum time to pay back the loan (sometimes $10,000 per adult) and CIC has the right to pursue collections and garnish wages, if the minister so decides. The repayments from existing loans are used for new loans (subject to a global cap on the revolving fund). Last year we issued $14 million in new loans and collected $12.5 million from newcomers working to pay off their debts. Given this model, I can’t help but wonder how “ability to repay” may inadvertently influence selection. The interest rates, by the way, are set in stone when the loan agreement is written, so there are some loans today carrying over nine per cent interest! If loan recipients default (and, for accounting purposes, CIC bets that about 10 per cent will), we bar them from sponsoring any members of their families. You can read some first-hand accounts of the effects of the loan repayment here.( link is in the article )
If it’s unclear how Canada is doing in meeting its own targets for bringing refugees to safety in Canada, it’s pretty clear it’s letting them remain economically vulnerable after they get here.
Links to the loan documentation, etc. are in the article:
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/making-sense-of-canadas-refugee-and-immigration-numbers/
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Unless each day can be looked back upon by an individual
as one in which he has had some fun, some joy, some
real satisfaction, that day is a loss.
