Ten months after the death of his wife, Edvard Destin, a Haitian “guardian angel” who arrived in Quebec in 2018, is unable to bring his children aged 4 and 11 who remained in Haiti with him. Bloc Québécois MP Mario Beaulieu urges federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller to intervene to speed up the children’s application for permanent residence.
“If they find themselves out there alone, they’re going to be in danger.” This is an urgent issue that must be addressed,” declared the member for La Pointe-de-l’Île. Selected by Quebec, not without a certain delay, the files of the two children are now stagnating in the hands of the federal government.
Edvard Destin is consumed by worry: his friend who has taken care of his children since the death of their mother must return to the United States by the end of the year. “If they don’t arrive [au Québec] within two weeks, I will have to go there to look for them,” he said in an interview with Duty. A highly dangerous undertaking at a time when Haiti is breaking records for insecurity and certain places, including Port-au-Prince, are prey to criminal gangs.
“My daughter told me, ‘Grandpa, if you come, you’ll die. We are going to ask you for sums of money and you [les] you don’t,” said the father, who replied: “It’s better that I die trying to go to you than that you die. Because there is no one to take care of you. And bandits have no heart. »
Edvard Destin requested asylum in Quebec in 2018, after leaving his wife, pregnant with their son, and their then six-year-old daughter in Haiti. “During COVID, I worked everywhere as a beneficiary attendant. In Mont-Tremblant, Matane, Laval. I did everything ! », says the father who is today a security agent in an organization in Montreal.
After obtaining his permanent residence in March 2022, via the program for health workers who worked on the front lines during COVID, Edvard Destin rushed to sponsor his wife and two children. It was last February, almost a year after filing his request for family reunification, that his wife died, leaving a family friend with custody of their two children.
“Administrative miseries”
Five years without seeing what he holds most dear in the world, Edvard Destin says he is “more than discouraged” from waiting. “I filled out the forms, I made the calls, I did everything. The children don’t understand what is happening. My boy doesn’t want to talk to me anymore and my daughter sometimes says to me “you’re mean grandpa, you don’t want to be around you.” »
The co-president of the Quebec Association of Immigration Lawyers, Stéphanie Valois, has difficulty explaining such delays. “When it comes to children, once the parentage link is demonstrated, there is no reason for refusal. It’s just bureaucracy,” she said, adding that criminal background checks do not have to be carried out.
The director of the Haiti house, Marjorie Villefranche, deplores the fact that “such administrative miseries” are being made for children. “It’s not even for reasons that make sense,” she says. “Behind the numbers lie human tragedies. That’s what’s horrible. »
According to Bloc MP Mario Beaulieu, whose constituency office closely followed the proceedings, Edvard Destin was quick to provide the new forms required to modify the children’s request following the death of their mother. New Quebec Selection Certificates (CSQ) were requested in May 2023 and in August, for at least 4 months, the file returned to the hands of the federal government for analysis. “It often takes a very long time at the Ministry of Immigration [canadien]. And when you call, it’s difficult to know where the file has gone. »
VRT, the solution?
Like Mr. Beaulieu, several other speakers, with whom The duty spoke, suggested that the children could benefit from a temporary resident visa (TRV), in order to await their permanent residence here. “There is a way to hurry to get them in,” said Marjorie Villefranche.
Last May, former Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced “accelerated processing” of temporary resident visa (TRV) applications as well as a series of measures so that families could be reunited sooner in waiting for the permanent residence application to be processed. He then claimed that 93% of the VRTs were approved and promised to process them in 30 days.
However, according to a request for access to information that The duty consulted, the acceptance rates of the various Canadian visa offices around the world vary greatly and that of Mexico City, where Haitian applications are processed, does not exceed 50%. “The promise of 30-day deadlines is not respected either. It’s more than 100 days,” said Laurianne Lachapelle, administrator of Québec Réunié, a Quebec collective that fights against sponsorship delays.
Ms. Lachapelle observes that the reasons for refusing to grant a VRT are often absurd. “We have seen children who were refused because they did not have a long enough travel history. How do you expect a 4 year old to have traveled the world! So let’s see! » She says she is “shocked” by the fact that the family of Mr. Destin, a guardian angel during COVID, did not arrive more quickly. “I can’t understand why we are letting down people who were here to save lives. »
Asked about the delays in this file, the two immigration ministries, federal and provincial, indicated to the Duty that they do not comment on individual cases.