Canada’s successful private refugee sponsorship program

World
Europe

By CGTN America

With the humanitarian crisis in Syria, Canada’s unique private refugee sponsorship program has caught world attention.

In this program, private sponsors commit to financing the resettlement of their refugee family for one year.

Ali Alhasan. /CGTN Photo

Canadian journalist Valerie Pringle, who got involved around the time a drowned Syrian boy washed up on the beach in Turkey, sponsored a family of six.

"The situation was so dire and so distressing,” said Pringle. “I had been to Syria. I felt a connection that way, and you just thought as a human being how can you not step in?”

Pringle needed to raise 30,000 US dollars. Within a week she had raised 130,000 US dollars. The demand to sponsor a family was strong.

“We’d get an email saying these families are available and almost by the time you could reply, they would say ‘I’m sorry, they’re taken,’” Pringle said.

Canada’s private refugee program first emerged in the 1970’s when the Vietnamese were fleeing their country in boats, making it the oldest private sponsorship program in the world.

Since then, more than 275,000 refugees have arrived in Canada through the private program.

Studies show that refugees sponsored privately are far more likely to become financially independent than those resettled by the government.

Syrian refugees are greeted by Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on their arrival from Beirut at the Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, December 11, 2015.

In the government program, they put them on an automatic entitlement monthly support, discouraging people to gain independence.

In the private program, funds are cut off after a year. They also get a group of Canadians as mentors and guides.

Now, more than 13 countries – including Australia, Spain and Japan – have made inquiries into how to implement similar programs, and in the UK, a similar program was launched.

It remains to be seen whether citizens from other countries will be as embracing of refugees as they are in Canada.

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