By Frank Stirk

SOME 17 months ago, when Ali (not his real name) first claimed to be a refugee from Iran, he lied on his application form. He said he was a Christian, thinking that would make it easier for him – and his wife and daughter – to be granted asylum in Canada.

To give some credence to his false claim in advance of an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing, Ali started going to church. It was then, amid all the upheaval and uncertainty of being a refugee claimant, that his life took an even more dramatic turn.

“During this process, I felt something is changing me – and I received the changes,” he said. “I started to follow the Bible. I started to follow [God’s] word. After three or four months, I was baptized.

“And I started being honest, doing the righteousness way. I went to my lawyer and I told him that part of my case is not right.”

Ali is still waiting for the hearing that will determine where he can stay in Canada. But despite all the challenges he faces, such as finding a good job, he said he is unexpectedly “very relaxed” about everything, because Christ is “feeding me.”

Khosi (last name withheld) and her two young children have been in Canada about the same length of time as Ali’s family, after having fled Swaziland in southern Africa.

Unlike Ali, she could honestly declare on arrival that she was a Christian. But like Ali, she too now has many reasons to give God the glory.

“I was praying a lot,” Khosi said. “My prayer was: I need a house which will be close by a church where I will be able to attend, that will preach salvation; and close by the school my children attend. And I got a church and a house by the school like that – by faith.”

Fortunate ones

Ali and Khosi are some of the more fortunate ones among the tens of thousands of refugees from every corner of the globe who arrive in Canada each year, hoping to make a new start here – free from the abuse, threats, persecution, imprisonment and even torture they experienced in their native countries.

Of the approximately 23,000 refugees seeking asylum in Canada annually, about 1,000 arrive through Vancouver International Airport. A further 7,500 or so are government-sponsored refugees – displaced persons who fled their homes in the face of violence, such as war or ethnic cleansing. Some 900 settle in the Metro Vancouver area each year.

A much smaller number arrive as a result of private sponsorship.

“When we look at the record,” said James Grunau, executive director of Journey Home Community Association in Burnaby, “just a little under half the claims are accepted in Canada. So we know that there is a high need for people to be able to find a safe haven in a country – other than their own, where they feel in danger and their life is threatened.”

Birthed out of a Willingdon Church home group about five years ago, Journey Home is one of a handful of Christian non-profit societies in Metro Vancouver that partner with larger aid agencies such as World Vision, the Red Cross and the Inland Refugee Society.

Its mission, Grunau said, is “just trying to reach out and do what we can to stand in the gap – between refugees and their needs, and what’s provided for them.”

The most immediate needs of refugee claimants for the first few months following their arrival include temporary housing, enrolling children in school, and getting a Social Insurance Number, which allows them to look for a job.

They also need to hire a lawyer and assemble the documentation needed for a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board, which will determine whether or not to grant asylum. The average wait-time for a hearing is currently 19 months.

Intense loneliness

But often just as great a need is for simple human contact.

“One of the biggest things refugees face is their intense loneliness,” said Jack Taylor, senior pastor of Faith Fellowship Baptist Church in southeast Vancouver – and the co-founder, in 2004, of New Hope Community Services Society.

“They’ve lost their culture, their language, their home, their friends, everything that’s familiar to them. We’re so happy to see them, but we don’t understand that.”

Faith Fellowship is one of the few churches in the region with an active outreach to refugees – Taylor is Ali’s and Khosi’s pastor – while New Hope provides transitional accommodation through two houses in Vancouver and several apartments in Surrey.

While serving as a volunteer at New Hope, Khosi tried to offer encouragement to her fellow refugees.

“Those who come crying, I told them when I left my country coming here, I didn’t know anyone,” she said. “They always say, ‘But you have your kids. We are alone’ – all those things. They were really isolated.”

“All your life is different – your environment, you don’t have friends, you don’t have family. And the isolation is very hard,” said Luis Rios, who fled Mexico with his son three-and-a-half years ago, and whose refugee status has now been granted.

“But Vancouver has very friendly people and that helps to feel a little less isolated and lonely.”

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During most of his first year in Canada, Rios lived at Kinbrace House in East Vancouver, a partner in the non-profit Salsbury Community Society, which in turn is affiliated with Grandview Calvary Baptist Church.

“I found it a very, very good experience,” he said, “because they really gave me and my son a lot of reassurance about all the issues we were experiencing at that time.”

Sense of vulnerability

“Refugee claimants live with an incredible sense of vulnerability,” said Loren Balisky, who runs Kinbrace. “They don’t know the end result. And too many of them say they feel they sort of stand out in the crowd. I think what people experience here, and these are their words, is ‘a sense of safety.’”

For some refugees, coming to Canada can be a total culture-shock. Seven Anglican parishes and one United Church congregation in North Vancouver are supporting two refugee families who are members of the Karen people.

For decades, they have suffered ethnic cleansing at the hands of Burma’s military dictators and internment in huge camps along the Thai-Burmese border.

In two days, these families had gone from living in the most primitive and oppressive conditions to “a world that must have been seemed completely overwhelming,” Peggy Trendell-Jensen of St. Catherine’s Capilano wrote in an online newsletter last November.

“Never before had they cooked with electricity, required a bank account, or used Western-style bathroom facilities” – let alone have to learn a foreign language.

Other refugees have the advantage of having family members already here who can sponsor them.

Last year, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver’s Office of Service and Justice helped families and their parishes to bring 237 refugees to enter Canada. An additional 610 cases are being processed.

Many of those sponsored refugees are Chaldean Catholics who have fled Iraq and Lebanon in the wake of the ongoing violence against Christians in their countries.

Parish full of help

When they arrive, said OSJ director Daniel Hahn, “They have a parish full of people essentially there to help them integrate into Canadian society. There’s people who have come through the process, who have businesses – who do a significant part of their hiring among people who have just landed. So jobs are lined up when they get here.”

For the parishes and the families involved, the reunions are often a cause for huge celebrations.

“When you see how grateful they are to come here from the situations they’re fleeing, it can be an incredible thing for a church to be part of,” he said.

And yet it can take four or five years for a privately sponsored refugee to finally enter Canada – a waiting time that Balisky fears is weakening the will of churches generally to become sponsors.

“It creates an incredible fatigue for people who are sponsoring,” he said. “And it’s such a complex system now, that you need to be quite educated on it and really keep up on it.”

Balisky believes a key obstacle to getting more Christians involved is the public perception of refugee claimants as just wanting, for example, to “suck off the welfare system” – an accusation he totally rejects.

“Our experience here,” he said, “is that except for those who are severely traumatized or single parents who just can’t manage it, people want to work. I would say nine out of 10 get employment as fast as they can and just go for it.”

Transformation

Those who come alongside refugees all appear to agree that it fosters transformation – for those who offer the support as well as for those who receive it.

“It’s changed the whole way we pray, the whole makeup of our church,” Taylor said. “We have refugees who come to the church who aren’t even connected to the houses – just because our reputation is out there, that we’re a church who cares for refugees.”

“We have seen just some amazing things happen,” said Grunau. “We’ve seen some folks be baptized. We’ve seen some folks integrated into the church.”

He added: “It’s such a biblical concept of welcoming the strangers and the foreigners who come to live among us, that we would be really remiss in not taking advantage of the opportunity and sharing this ministry with God.”

To learn more about offering help to refugees, check out the following websites:

CoramNetwork.ca – A local network of Christian organizations, churches and individuals who meet for prayer, fellowship and collaboration around refugee issues.

RefugeeHighway.net – A global network of Christian refugee organizations, churches and individuals who are working to bring hope and healing to refugees.

July 2010