Syed Hussan and Mary Gellatly Contributors, Toronto Star
Many Canadians grappling with skyrocketing rent and home prices are being led to believe that an influx of immigrants outpacing the construction of homes is causing the crisis.
But that’s not true. The real issue is that investors and builders are building fewer homes to keep prices high.
Maureen Silcoff, Ottawa Citizen
[…] Regularization programs should not be restricted to people who lack any immigration status. Including those who are in the refugee determination system would help resolve another issue. Canada has seen an uptick of refugee claimants, even after the expansion of the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement earlier this year, which bars most refugees from entering Canada at the land border. As with the Guardian Angels program, regularization programs inclusive of individuals in the refugee stream can relieve pressures on the refugee system and provide a pathway to permanent residence for those who have contributed to the Canadian economy. […]
Operating like a non-profit version of Airbnb, an online home-sharing platform has been launched in the face of Canada’s housing crisis, addressing the needs of at least one particularly vulnerable group.
The new tool by Refugee Housing Canada matches asylum seekers in need of safe, secure accommodation with Canadian hosts who are willing to open their home and offer their spare rooms at an affordable rent.
It works like a dating site, where both the hosts and renters undergo vetting and create a detailed profile of what they are offering and what they are looking for before making a connection to decide if they would be a right fit in terms of considerations such as asking rent, location, lifestyle and daily routines.
[…]
Tsering Lhamo of Toronto’s FCJ Refugee Centre said asylum seekers face tremendous obstacles in securing housing due to social stigma, and landlords often turn them away because they have no references or credit and job history in Canada. (Though many asylum seekers are eager to work, they must still wait for a few months for a work permit.)
“They arrive here with no means and have to rely on social assistance, which gives $733 a month for a single person,” said Lhamo, whose centre runs four transitional homes that house 40 women and children, and now has to rent on Airbnb to accommodate more than 50 others monthly.
“That money includes all the basic needs and shelter. Where can we find a place like that?”
Freedom Fighters: Code Gray, Rogers TV
How does human trafficking impact precarious status migrants and where does it take place? What support is available for migrants who have been trafficked? Executive Director of FCJ Refugee Centre, Loly Rico; and Anti-Human Trafficking Manager of FCJ, Jovana Blagovcanin, share their insights, experience and knowledge about this topic on this episode of Freedom Fighters: Code Gray, at Rogers TV.
The federal government has been accused of downgrading its commitment to welcome 15,000 “humanitarian” migrants that it agreed to in exchange for closing down the land border to asylum seekers.
Instead of accepting 15,000 migrants on humanitarian basis, Ottawa now said 4,000 of the spots will be allocated to temporary foreign workers while the other 11,000 spaces — for permanent residence — are restricted to Colombians, Haitians and Venezuelans.
A new report from the auditor general of Canada released Thursday warns that while progress has been made, the federal government must improve how it manages immigration programs to reduce permanent residency backlogs.
[…]
Auditor General Karen Hogan’s office audited eight permanent residency programs and found that despite efforts to reduce pandemic backlogs, most people applying for permanent residency were still waiting a long time for their applications to be processed.
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.
“Canada should also accept non-Ukrainians fleeing the conflict” in Ukraine, said Diana Gallego, FCJ Refugee Centre Senior Director, on an interview this morning on CBC Radio program Metro Morning.
“The war and occupation in Ukraine is a tragedy for all humanity,” said Gallego. “In Ukraine there were already refugees living there, people already displaced by conflicts from the Middle East or Africa. Now, where are they going to run again? Who is going to protect them? Canada should open the door for them also,” she added.
Listen to the whole interview:
The Canadian Health Coalition has won the right to intervene in an important case before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that could impact the ability of refugees to access Canada’s medicare system.
The CHC, the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues (CCPI) and the FCJ Refugee Centre were granted leave to intervene in the case of Nell Toussaint v. Attorney General of Canada by Justice Belobaba on January 14, 2022. Their application was opposed by the Attorney General of Canada. The coalition was represented by well-known human rights lawyer Martha Jackman, past board member who also represented the CHC and CCPI in the Chaoulli case.
You always knew when Francisco Rico Martinez was in the room: he was brash, outrageous and had the loudest laugh. His life was characterized by feet lovingly planted in both his native, as well as his adopted, homelands. He wore the red sweater of his favourite hometown soccer team (Salvador’s FAS) but quickly switched whenever it became time to don the colours of the Blue Jays or Raptors.
Asylum seekers hoping to cross the border at unauthorized border points, such as Quebec’s Roxham Road, will once again be allowed to enter the country to make a claim. The federal government lifted the ban on Sunday, citing the improving public health situation and the re-opening of the land border with the United States. The ban, which has been in place since late March of last year, saw would-be refugees denied at the border and returned to the United States.
