Immigration Field: Haitian Population

Rights And Democracy Dept: This newspaper has joined the chorus, for what we believe is good reason. One of the arguments we and others have used is that the world has no shortage of people who beyond doubt truly do need a place of safety. Queue-jumpers create a danger that all Canadians will turn sour on the whole idea of welcoming refugees, according to Montreal Gazette. And yet now, eight long months later, our vaunted promise of "fast-tracking" some Haitians for admission has produced only a few arrivals. The goofy shared-jurisdiction system by which Quebec has barged into the immigration field is no doubt one culprit. But can that really explain the full scale of this inertia? A local chapter of Rights and Democracy reported last week that thousands of claimants and their families still languish in bureaucratic limbo and amid the furor touched off by the arrival in Canadian waters of the MV Sun Sea, many Canadians have expressed skepticism, gusting to cynicism, about the refugee status claimed by the ship's paying passengers, Tamils from Sri Lanka. Last January an earthquake killed as estimated 225,000 people in Haiti, and destroyed the housing of one million more. Beyond dispute, Haitians moved to the top of the list for compassionate immigration consideration. And with a substantial Haitian population already here, the way to go was obvious: Quebec promised to accelerate family reunifications; Ottawa nodded in support. As reported in the news.
@t montreal gazette, refugee status