Many asylum seekers in Toronto that have been stranded on the streets of the city for weeks have been relocated, some going to two churches and others to temporary hotel rooms. Loly Rico, Executive Director of the FCJ Refugee Centre, talked about it on CBC Morning Live with host Juanita Taylor:
Loly Rico, Executive Director of the FCJ Refugee Centre, was interviewed on the Alex Pierson Show (640 Toronto radio), with host Tasha Kheiriddin:
Sharry Aiken, Chair of the FCJ Refugee Centre’s Board of Directors, and Associate Professor specializing in immigration and refugee law at Queen’s University, participated as a guest on an episode of the CityNews podcast The Big Story about the shelter crisis impacting refugee claimants and migrants in Toronto. “It is a failure of all three levels of government,” Aiken said.
Asylum seekers come to Canada for safety and a better life, but instead a group of them ended up sleeping on the streets of the country’s biggest city. The Peter Street shelter intake office was thrust into the national spotlight after the city–dealing with an overwhelmed shelter system–started to refer asylum seekers to federally run programs. But when people in need showed up to Peter Street site they were met with long waits, forcing them to stay on the street out front for weeks with no other place to go.
The Agenda with Steve Paikin, TVO
New research reveals most Canadians are unaware that labour trafficking is a major issue across the country. But Canadian authorities recently shut down an international labour trafficking ring operating in York region and across the GTA and rescued 64 Mexican nationals who were being exploited. Steve Paikin talks to experts about what labour trafficking entails, why this issue flies under the radar, sweeping changes to the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, the pandemic’s impact, and policy recommendations.
With Loly Rico, Executive Director of the FCJ Refugee Centre; Julia Drydyk, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking; and Syed Hussan, Executive Director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
[…] Loly Rico, the executive director of Toronto’s FCJ Refugee Centre, said Canada has a more fair asylum system that processes cases faster and allows claimants to work while waiting for their hearings. With Biden’s administration continuing Trump’s policies, Rico said the push for irregular migrants to Canada won’t end anytime soon.
[…] Abolishing the border agreement “is not going to open a flood gate but would distribute migrants more evenly across Canada,” said Rico, who with her late husband, Francisco Rico Martinez, fled El Salvador in 1990 under a program to grant asylum to those trapped in their own country that was spiked by the Harper government in 2012.
Rose Celest always fancied the idea of visiting the picturesque Rideau Canal and seeing the gothic architecture of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, but the Canadian capital just seemed so out of reach for the Toronto woman.
In her 14 years in Canada — the last nine spent as an undocumented migrant — the former live-in caregiver’s travels have been limited to accompanying her employer’s family to their cottage in Collingwood and to their hometown, Montreal.
Celest avoids leaving her tiny apartment, except for work, to prevent any encounter with authorities — and possible deportation to her native Philippines.
Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
There’s a storm coming, warns FCJ Refugee Centre executive director Loly Rico. “Our numbers have increased very highly,” Rico told The Catholic Register.
As one of a handful of organizations that serves asylum seekers in Toronto, Rico is seeing a significant slice of a staggering 61,890 asylum claims processed in Canada the first eight months of this year — already more than twice the 24,930 asylum claims processed in 2021. As COVID travel restrictions eased this spring, it wasn’t just vacationers on the move. The eight-month total of asylum claims for 2022 is 97 per cent of the total for 2019, the last full year before the pandemic and the all-time record.
At the front door, FCJ is greeting an average of 60 people a day looking for help. “Every day we see families coming,” Rico said, and those families typically need housing, English classes and legal help with their asylum claims. All are in short supply. […]
Shannon Martin interviewed FCJ Refugee Centre Executive Director Loly Rico on CBC’s Our Toronto, at the ceremony where Loly received the YWCA Women of Distinction Award in the category of Refugee Rights. Watch it at minute 24:35.
Ivan Lypovyk welcomed Ukrainian refugees into his home this week. Loly Rico, Executive Director of the FCJ Refugee Centre, says they face multiple challenges ahead; immigration lawyer Jamie Liew raises concerns about their temporary status.
Listen to the whole interview:
CTV reports on the study Pandemic precarities, which is shedding light on how the pandemic has affected non-status migrants in the GTA when it comes to their economic and health conditions. The study was directed by Luin Goldring (York University) and Patricia Landolt (University of Toronto) in collaboration with Francisco Rico–Martinez and Loly Rico, from the FCJ Refugee Centre. Diana Gallego and Natasha Rollings also directed the FCJ team.
