Why we decided to focus more on BVOR refugees rather than named-case sponsorship

For Private Sponsorship groups like ours, which want to undertake sponsorships on an on-going basis, there are number of benefits of working through the Blended Visa Office Referral (BVOR) program as compared to the Named-Case stream.

Named-Cases are those where an application is prepared here in Canada and submitted to the Canadian Immigration Department (IRCC) for review and, hopefully, approval. The vast majority of Syrian refugees who were privately sponsored over the last two years came to Canada through the Named-Case program. Their applications were prepared by family or community members or by groups such as Lifeline Syria before being submitted to the IRCC for consideration. 

The BVOR program, on the other hand, contains refugees whose files have already been reviewed and approved by the IRCC.  A list containing brief biographical profiles of the approved BVOR refugees is periodically circulated by the RefugeeSponsorship and Training Program and Group of 5 or private sponsorships groups, working with their Sponsorship Agreement Holders, can choose from this list who they want to sponsor.  

When comparing the two refugee programs, Private Sponsorship groups may find that there are a number of benefits of opting to sponsor refugees from the BVOR stream. These benefits include:

• Lower fundraising requirements:  Under the BVOR program the government pays up to 40% of the associated costs for the first year of resettlement here in Canada. Named-Cases require private sponsors to pay for 100% of the settlement costs.

• Faster and more predictable arrival times:  Since refugees under the BVOR stream are pre-approved by the government and are ‘ready to travel’, they will normally arrive within 12 weeks of the private group requesting the sponsorship [Note – there was a breakdown in the BVOR program in 2016/2017 which led to inordinate delays, substitutions and outright cancellations but this was an exception to the program’s normal operating process]. 

Named-Cases typically take a minimum of 18 months but possibly as long as 36 - 48 months from submission of the application to their arrival into Canada, assuming the application is approved.  

• Reduced Paperwork: Private groups need to fill in minimal paperwork to sponsor BVOR refugees whereas Named-Cases involve extensive paperwork and backup documentation to support the application. 

•  BVOR cases are pre-approved and arms-length, eliminating the possibility of emotional turmoil that can arise in stalled or rejected Named-Case applications: With Named-Cases, delays or rejections can be heart-wrenching for both the sponsors and the refugees themselves. In some cases, the sponsors are communicating directly with the Named-Case applicants trying to explain why the application is delayed or possibly helping out financially until it is approved. [Note – the process errors in some of the BVOR files mentioned above, in 2016/2017, in some cases also lead to similar issues, but that is not how the program normally functions].

• Sponsor groups can choose who to sponsor based on their own priorities: Our group is interested in sponsoring the most vulnerable of refugees – those with medical issues, women at risk, larger families, single parent families etc.   In addition to these criteria, we are now also interested in sponsoring Rohingya refugees. The circulated BVOR lists provide profile descriptions, including country of origin, which allow groups to select who they want to sponsor based on their own pre-determined priorities

• BVOR sponsorships do not use up scarce Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH) quotas: Each year the IRCC sets a limited quota for the number of sponsorships that a particular SAH, such as the United Church, can undertake.   Since BVOR sponsorships do not count against these scarce quotas they are more appealing to SAH’s and they can be initiated even when the SAH has reached its annual quota limit.

I want to emphasize that both the Named-Case and the BVOR programs are important and valuable in terms of Canada’s overall refugee efforts and the humanitarian values that they espouse.  The Named-Case stream enables community groups, or the newcomers themselves, to sponsor relatives or other key members of the newcomers’ original community, and this has been shown to be extremely important to the emotional well-being of the newcomers and in helping to ensure their successful long-term resettlement here in Canada.  From a purely humanitarian point of view, family reunification is obviously something we should strive for, rather than having families separated by geography and possibly leaving close family members overseas, still in harms way.   

Furthermore, in what has become known as the “Echo” effect, many Private Groups developed a strong attachment with their sponsored newcomers and are now undertaking follow-on Named-Case applications to help these newcomers bring in extended family members as well.  Our group have decided that we will consider sponsoring adult children or the parents and grandparents of people we have sponsored but generally we are not looking at sponsoring relatives beyond that – but that is a decision that our group, like other groups, must make on a case by case basis.

Notwithstanding the “Echo” effect, for those groups that are considering sponsoring refugees on an on-going basis, one after another, they may find for the reasons mentioned above that the BVOR program is much easier to work with than the Named-Case stream.  Currently there is a shortage of Private sponsors putting their hand up for BVOR refugees which is a shame given the many benefits associated with this program.

Andrew FitzGerald

Chair, Ripple Refugee Project

This article was first published on the Canada4Refugees blog

   

New Canadian government support for Syrian refugees

Things are finally moving in Canada. International Development Minister Christian Paradis announced a Syrian emergency relief fund on Saturday that will match donations from Canadians up to $100 million.

And on the same day, the Ontario government pledged $10.5 million to the Syrian refugee crisis and hopes the province can resettle 10.000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016.

A Global News reporter did a short interview with our group member Andrew for her story.

Who should we sponsor?

We started of our second meeting with a pot-luck dinner at Pegi and Phil’s house.
Rebecca, a registered nurse with extensive mental health experience, joined us to become our newest member. There are now 14 people in the sponsorship group – plus 15-year old Kieran, who has decided to accompany his uncle Raghu to the meetings. Will this large size make things unwieldy and complicated? Some group members suggested splitting the group in two, each with their own sponsorship agreement. After some discussions we agreed to stay together, as it would put less pressure on us inexperienced ‘first time sponsors’ and allow for more flexibility, as many of us have a busy schedule and are often traveling. We all agreed that given our large size, we need functioning sub-committees with clear expectations.

Several of us volunteered to be the lead for the various tasks required by the sponsorship agreement, such as housing, employment and health. 

One of the most important questions we asked ourselves was: Who should we sponsor? A woman at risk, someone from the LGBT community, a family? Some thought that sponsoring a bigger group of people might be too ambitious financially. We would need to raise at least $17,000 for a group of four – probably a lot more given how expensive Toronto is. Others felt strongly about sponsoring a mother,or parents, with children and felt that our group is big and connected enough to raise sufficient funds. Some members pointed out the potential difficulty of settling in teenagers into Canadian society. 

Given the strong medical expertise in our group, with two physicians and two registered nurses, and the availability of excellent medical and mental health resources in Toronto, we agreed that we should be open to sponsoring refugees with medical conditions. Several of us have been especially moved by the plight of Syrian refugees. We recognized that our choices are dependent on the profiles we will receive from Citizen and Immigration Canada, via the sponsorship agreement holder. Once we choose a profile we can put a place holder for three days to make further inquiries.

Our next important step will be to find a sponsor agreement holder (SAH). We discussed which one would be the most suitable for us. Andrew will first contact the United Church to see if a congregation is willing to support us. This lead to an interesting discussion of why SAHs seem to be mostly faith-based. None of us has any affiliation to a church or other religious group. Why are there not more secular groups involved in sponsoring refugees?
By Claudia Blume

"Maybe mother's day isn't the best day for this"

It’s a Sunday morning in May and I’m a little nervous.  Claudia and I have invited quite a few people to a refugee awareness event at our house for this afternoon.  But it is Mother’s Day and a lot of people have already indicated that they can’t make it. 

I’m hoping we won’t be wasting the time of our 3 invited speakers, each of whom has lots of experience in this area and who will be donating their Sunday afternoon in order to meet with us.

As it turns out, we end up with a pretty full house with over 30 people showing up. It seems that the refugee issue is resonating with people.

The first speaker, Yosief Araya, works for the Refugee Sponsorship Training Program (RSTP). The program is funded by the federal government and is designed to support Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAHs). Yosief explained to us the different ways in which private citizens can sponsor refugees.  One option is to nominate people for the Canadian government to recognize as refugees (so-called “named” refugees). The process takes between 24 – 48 months and sponsors receive no financial support from the government. 

The other option, which seems a better fit for us, is to sponsor refugees through the “Blended Visa Office-Referred Program”. These are people who have already been identified by the UNHCR as refugees, have been accepted by Canada and are “ready to travel“.  This latter category requires very little paperwork on the part of the sponsoring group and the refugees can arrive into Canada within 1 to 4 months. Under this program, at least five people have to form a constituent group and have to pay for more than half of the sponsored refugee’s costs in the first year. Yosief told us that Canada plans to bring in 800 to 1000 refugees under the blended refugee settlement program in 2015. 

We learned that the main focus of Canada's blended VOR program in 2015 is on the following populations: Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Congolese, Burundians, Burmese, Bhuanese and Colombians.

Yosief is followed by Khwaka Kukuboo of the United Church of Canada. Faith communities have historically been a leader in forming groups to sponsor and settle refugees and the United Church has been one of the biggest players in Canada. Khwaka shared a document with profiles of refugees currently available for sponsorship with us. The vast majority are from Eritrea, followed by Burmese. Surprisingly, there are no Syrians on the list.

Our final speaker was Larry Peloso, representing the Metropolitan Community Church, which has been a leader in advocating for LGBT refugee issues and sponsoring and settling refugees who are being persecuted for their sexual orientation.

I think many people in the audience found it surprising that the Canadian policy for most refugees is that they must be sponsored and settled by private citizens in order for them to be allowed to come to Canada.  While European governments will pay for and arrange the settlement of refugees, it is private citizens who must undertake both the cost and the time to settle many of the refugees coming to Canada.

There was also a discussion about how big a problem the current refugee situation is. Globally, there are an estimated 60 million people who have been displaced due to war and persecution. 13 million have been forced to flee their countries.  

We talked about how easy it is to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the crisis, to become paralyzed when confronted by the need.  But then someone pointed out that while our sponsorship of a single refugee family would only represent a drop in the bucket, really a drop in the ocean , that in fact for that one family, for each of the individuals within that family, it is a pretty transformative ‘drop’.  That in fact that family will be moving from a refugee camp where they are living in limbo, with no clear hope for the future, to Toronto where whole new avenues of possibility and opportunity will open up for each one of the family members. 

Ending our meeting with this discussion regarding sponsoring a refugee family, providing a hopeful future where it doesn’t exist right now, and thinking specifically about what it must be like for the parents themselves to see their children in need, it suddenly seemed appropriate that we were holding this event on Mother’s Day, in a safe place, on a sunny afternoon.  

Andrew FitzGerald