Even if only a handful of Gazans among the 1,000 that Canada has committed to welcoming have actually managed to make the journey to the country, Ottawa is raising its reception ceiling, and is now reaching out to 5,000 family members of Canadians.
“The biggest challenge is what Canada cannot control, that is, who can leave the Gaza Strip,” explained Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Marc Miller, before a parliamentary committee on Monday.
The minister also offered some statistics showing that Canada has actually managed to issue only a quarter (254) of the temporary resident visas promised as part of a special measure aimed at welcoming family members of Canadians. . Of this number, only 41 arrived in Canada.
The delay is because Palestinians eligible for this special program must first travel to Cairo, Egypt. This is currently impossible since the Rafah border is closed, like the other crossing points. It is in Egypt where refugees must provide their biometric data, such as their fingerprints, and where their criminal backgrounds are checked, for example.
However, some people have managed to leave Gaza on their own in recent months, such as using travel documents issued by another country. The fate of the others depends on the willingness of the Israeli army to let people on the list of those accepted by Canada.
“It still remains that we will have to have a breakthrough, a humanitarian pause to ensure that the people still stuck in Rafah can get out,” Minister Marc Miller told journalists.
He said he had received “some positive signals” from the Israeli government to the effect that the Canadian reception program could be recognized by this country, which currently controls entries and exits from Gaza.
“The whole program was built on the presumption that there was going to be some way to get them out of Gaza. That didn’t happen, and so people had to pay extraordinary amounts of money to go to Egypt and then to Cairo,” Miller lamented.
Launched on January 9, Canada’s program is only open to family members of a citizen or permanent resident of Canada currently living in the country. He was quickly criticized for his slowness in issuing visas.
Furthermore, approximately 1,200 Palestinians managed to enter Canada through immigration routes other than the special program announced at the beginning of the year.
Questioned by the elected members of the standing committee on citizenship and immigration, Marc Miller did not want to come further than the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, on the subject of the request for an international arrest targeting the Prime Minister of ‘Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.