The Tories are Making It Really Hard for Haiti Earthquake Survivors to Stay in Canada

Montreal community groups say the federal government's refusal to ease off the red tape could lead to the mass deportation of Haitian refugees.

After the deadly 2010 quake in Haiti that killed more than 200,000 and displaced about 1.5 million people, thousands of Haitians sought refuge in Canada—a country with an already massive ex-pat community.

Most were not granted official refugee status and have since been living in an administrative limbo that allowed them to live and work in Canada insofar as their country was deemed unsafe.

That arrangement changed last December, when the Tories lifted the moratorium on returns to Haiti and Zimbabwe. As such, refugees from these two countries were given six months to either apply for permanent residency on compassionate and humanitarian grounds or leave Canada. But representatives from Montreal's Haitian community say the arrangement is far from "compassionate"; they claim the feds have made the application process too complicated, requesting a huge amount of very expensive paperwork. They worry hundreds of people will now fall through the immigration system's cracks, creating a complicated mess of undocumented residents that opens up the possibility of mass deportations. They're also not super convinced either Haiti or Zimbabwe is that safe to go "home" to. La Maison d'Haïti is one of five Montreal-area community centres assisting people with residency applications. Director Marjorie Villefranche says that on average, each request takes about 24 hours to prepare. Essentially, Citizenship and Immigration Canada is asking people who lost everything—including, in some cases, entire families—to provide proof of their devastation through documents like land deeds and mortgage statements. Not exactly the kind of things you think of grabbing as your house is collapsing. "Everything said has to be proven," says Villefranche. "You need people out there to take pictures for you, you need to go online and find articles." The request package can be about 30 pages, and also has to include documents like employment letters or teacher's notes that detail the person's integration into Canada. "You have to write out your life story and explain why you ended up in Canada, why you can't return to Haiti." Considering that about 90 percent of Haitians who came to Canada after the quake settled in the Montreal area, Villefranche calculates local organizations are looking at roughly 72,000 hours of paperwork. "To do all of that in six months, we would have needed to hire 100 people on a full-time basis," she says. La Maison d'Haïti has had to make do with three employees and 15 volunteers. "We're open on Saturdays now," says Villefranche. They've also had to set aside time for outreach work, as some Haitians are still unaware the moratorium has been lifted and that they could face an unpleasant surprise come June 1. Villefranche and her colleagues have been pleading with the federal government to simplify their process, or, at the very least, extend the June 1 deadline. On top of the permanent residency application, in Quebec, a provincial residency application is also required, and Villefranche points out the process is much easier and faster to navigate at this level. In an email sent to VICE, Citizenship and Immigration Canada spokesperson Sonia Lesage wrote that "Canada has one of the most generous and fair immigration systems." "We have extended that generosity for over 10 years to Haitians and Zimbabweans by allowing them to stay in Canada due to unsafe conditions in their home countries." In response to whether the government would consider extending the deadline, she wrote —without elaborating why—that it was "very important" that CIC receive applications "no later than June 1, 2015. Villefranche says she feels the lack of flexibility is political. "In the official statements, they say they want to help us, they say they want to help people become permanent residents," she says. "But I don't think there's a lot of good will there." Follow Brigitte Noël on Twitter.