Immigration Department and Loan

: An internal review dated from September, and also posted to the website, recommended the department do more to support its humanitarian policy objectives and facilitate the resettlement of all refugees who do not qualify for a loan, according to Globe and Mail. It also recommended that more families get a reprieve from paying what has become the default option for most resettled refugees. The department pledged to address the challenges with the loans and said it will have solutions ranging from operational changes to fundamental modifications to the program design by mid-2016. The Immigration Department currently budgets about $500,000 a year to waive the travel loans for about 50 to 63 extremely vulnerable families, amounting to just 2 per cent of the total number of non-Syrian refugee cases it sponsors annually, according to the review. Only 14 per cent of government-sponsored refugees reported earnings in their first year, compared with more than half of those privately sponsored. Refugee and settlement organizations have long criticized Canada for these loans and their interest, and the new review found that the department policy of forcing recipients to start paying back the loans within 30 days of landing was not consistent with standard practices. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.