Refugee Funds Inadequate
The $398 million federal budget for immigrants goes mainly towards information programs, websites and settlement programs for immigrants, leaving the refugee segment underfunded.
Marty Dolin, Executive Director of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Centre [MIIC] says none of the $398 million goes into refugee sponsorship. It amounts to $20 million annually for all the provinces, anyway, most of which is spent on English and French language classes.
The minimum provincial budget should be about $800,000, allocated on the basis of the provincial percentages of the national refugee population, he suggests.
Dolin says it's a gross embarrassment to have to tell refugees they've to live on a welfare budget, rendering eating chicken, or smoking, luxuries.
The federal government used to set the rents, but now they're set by the province.
The provincial welfare budget for rent has been flatlined ten years now. The much-vaunted housing boom in the city's at the high end, not at the lower end of the real estate market, inhabited by refugees.
Some economists say a trickle-down effect may be expected in the real estate market but that, according to Dolin, is like feeding a horse and waiting behind it.
On viewing some of the apartments shown them by MIIC staff, some refugees opined that it was better in the refugee camps they came from.
Every refugee has to pay his/her own transportation to Canada. They can't sponsor their relatives till that's been paid back. We can move troops around the world, but not refugees. A family of seven finds it owes say $12,000 on arrival in this country--on a welfare budget. By the time they repay it, other relatives may have passed away in their old countries.
Ottawa wants to reduce the Canadian refugee intake on the grounds that 'these people are more difficult' than the average immigrant.
That's another way of saying, 'Let them rot and die overseas so they don't bother us here, despite our professed Christian values and ideals.'
However, Winnipeggers are essentially compassionate to refugees. The day after a recent press article about the arrival of a woman from Nairobi, several school teachers called Dolin to inform that their kids had raised $600 for her.
Marty Dolin, Executive Director of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Centre [MIIC] says none of the $398 million goes into refugee sponsorship. It amounts to $20 million annually for all the provinces, anyway, most of which is spent on English and French language classes.
The minimum provincial budget should be about $800,000, allocated on the basis of the provincial percentages of the national refugee population, he suggests.
Dolin says it's a gross embarrassment to have to tell refugees they've to live on a welfare budget, rendering eating chicken, or smoking, luxuries.
The federal government used to set the rents, but now they're set by the province.
The provincial welfare budget for rent has been flatlined ten years now. The much-vaunted housing boom in the city's at the high end, not at the lower end of the real estate market, inhabited by refugees.
Some economists say a trickle-down effect may be expected in the real estate market but that, according to Dolin, is like feeding a horse and waiting behind it.
On viewing some of the apartments shown them by MIIC staff, some refugees opined that it was better in the refugee camps they came from.
Every refugee has to pay his/her own transportation to Canada. They can't sponsor their relatives till that's been paid back. We can move troops around the world, but not refugees. A family of seven finds it owes say $12,000 on arrival in this country--on a welfare budget. By the time they repay it, other relatives may have passed away in their old countries.
Ottawa wants to reduce the Canadian refugee intake on the grounds that 'these people are more difficult' than the average immigrant.
That's another way of saying, 'Let them rot and die overseas so they don't bother us here, despite our professed Christian values and ideals.'
However, Winnipeggers are essentially compassionate to refugees. The day after a recent press article about the arrival of a woman from Nairobi, several school teachers called Dolin to inform that their kids had raised $600 for her.
posted by Ashoke Dasgupta @ 8:27 PM
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