Asylum seekers | The community is crying out for help

On the brink of exhaustion, the Montreal community is asking governments to do more to help them meet the urgent needs of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers present in the territory.

“The network of community organizations has reached a saturation point,” says Stephan Reichhold, director of the Round Table of Organizations Serving Refugees and Immigrants.

“We are hitting a wall. We are no longer able to supply. »

Mr. Reichhold made this observation during a press conference, held Tuesday morning, in the presence of members of a coalition made up of consultation committees from 13 Montreal neighborhoods. This call for help seeks to arouse a sense of urgency to resolve a problem that has often been raised over the past few months, particularly in The Press. It is also the result of the fact that these organizations have discovered that there is no respite at the start of the year, unlike in previous years, and that requests for assistance continue to increase.

To respond to the “distress” of migrants, the community therefore calls on governments to offer asylum seekers better access to public services, in particular childcare services and employability measures, and to increase funding organizations to build their capacity to provide adequate support and guidance to migrants.

In 2022, a record number of 92,715 asylum applications were registered in Canada, including 59,205, or 64%, in Quebec.

“Maximum”

“Our services are stretched to the max,” says Sébastien Patrice, manager of the Cafeteria MultiCaf. We are at 400% of our capacity, without substantial funding to meet emerging needs. »

Also in Côte-des-Neiges, the Immigrant Interpreter, Assistance and Referral Service received, on average, five asylum seekers per day, before the borders reopened. “We have reached around sixty asylum seekers per day with the same staff and the same grants,” says the director, Fatma Djebbar.

In Saint-Laurent, the same observation. More than 50% of new users are asylum seekers, reports Maria Ximena Florez, director of the Committee of Social Organizations of Saint-Laurent. “Community organizations are overwhelmed. They don’t have the resources at all to do their job well. We must act before this situation becomes even more dramatic. »

Eva Garcia-Turgeon, director of Foyer du monde, recalls that in 2017, the Olympic Stadium was transformed into a refuge for migrants. “At that time, we had opened 11 temporary accommodation centres. Today, we have 46,000 people and nothing has been done. We are at the pandemic level in terms of resources. »

“Not just numbers”

The community sector also wants the government to cancel the 1996 Council of Ministers decision that limits access to public services for asylum seekers and to set up a transitional accommodation system.

Upon their arrival in Quebec, asylum seekers are temporarily housed in hotels managed by the provincial and the federal government, mainly in the Montreal region. Ottawa manages a greater number of hotel rooms than Quebec City, without however offering the same support services. It is also Ottawa that assumes the costs related to the settlement of asylum seekers. This includes temporary accommodation, financial assistance and health care.

“Asylum seekers are not just numbers,” says Gary Obas, director of the organization for integration, citizenship and inclusion (ICI) of Montreal North. “These are people who want to contribute to the economic development of society. And, anyway, the majority of asylum seekers will become permanent residents. »