Thousands of refugees to settle in Canada
March 30 2010 by Liam Clifford
Canada’s Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney, has pledged to reform the country’s procedures for issuing Canadian visas to refugees.
Minister Kenney is proposing to
expand the Government-Assisted Refugees Program by up to 500 places and to add a
further 2,000 resettlement places to the Private Sponsorship of Refugees
Program. This would mean that Canadian immigration would allow as many as 14,500
refugees from refugee camps and urban slums to settle in Canada every year.
“Millions of people have fled violence and persecution to seek refuge
outside their home countries and we would like to do more to provide them with
protection in Canada,” said Minister Kenney. “We know that we can’t help
everyone. But what we can do is introduce balanced reforms to our refugee system
that will allow us to expand our refugee resettlement programs to provide
protection to more people.”
It is estimated that there are 10.5 million
UN-designated refugees living in refugee camps and urban slums around the world.
Canada annually resettles 10,000 to 12,000 of the 100,000 refugees that are
resettled globally – over 10%.
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