Hermona Kuluberhan
QUOI Media
They were relatively civilized middle-class Europeans who looked more like the family living next door than the refugees western nations had become so accustomed to seeing trickle across their borders. At least, that’s how western news media and politicians depicted the Ukrainian citizens forced to flee their homes following the Russian invasion in February 2022.
As a second generation Canadian and daughter of two Eritrean refugees, the distinctions drawn between “us” and “them” were textbook dog-whistle messages that were impossible to ignore. When I traveled to Ethiopia and visited my uncle this past May, I witnessed first-hand how those refugees not considered part of “us” become forgotten casualties of broken immigration systems.
Picture this: you grow up living in an eight-bedroom home in a residential neighbourhood two-hours outside the capital city. Your father runs a public transportation business, and your mother is a shopkeeper who sells spices. You and your seven siblings attend the only private school in town. The life you lead is a good life until one day, the political situation of your country changes and suddenly your family loses everything. In the blink of an eye, fifteen years passes by in the refugee camp where you’ve been waiting in limbo for your asylum papers to arrive.
This is my uncle’s story, in a nutshell. Despite hailing from a part of the world considered “uncivilized,” the life he led prior to the 1998 Ethiopia-Eritrea border war was not all that different from the life of your average middle-class Canadian citizen.
Research studies have long indicated that lengthy asylum processes adversely impact the mental health of refugee claimants, leading to an increased risk of life-long psychiatric disorders and my uncle is no exception. After fifteen years in Shimelba camp we lost all contact with him for two years until 2021 when he was found homeless and sleeping in the streets of Addis Ababa. When I met him this summer, his mental health had deteriorated to such a point that my family pooled resources and placed him in a private facility where he could receive treatment for depression while he continued waiting to be granted asylum.
While his case is an extreme one, long asylum wait-times are not uncommon. In a 2017 memo, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada estimated that by 2021 wait times for asylum claims would take up to 11 years – this is much closer to the bleak reality faced by refugees than the projected 24-month period indicated on the department’s website.
So, when the Canadian government announced measures in March that would fast-track the arrival of an unlimited number of Ukrainian asylum seekers and allow them to apply for a renewable three-year temporary residence, many wondered why the same quick action couldn’t be taken for the refugees who have languished in the system for years.
Canada moving at a breakneck speed to implement targeted supports for Ukrainian asylum seekers was a reminder that our refugee policies are not race-blind commitments to humanitarianism. Who a nation welcomes across its borders and into its society reveals who belongs, who doesn’t and which lives it believes are worth saving.
This December marks 18 years since my uncle first filed an asylum claim in 2004 yet because he is not one of those refugees deemed to “look like us,” there is no telling when his ordeal will end.
Criticism of slow resettlement processes are usually met with the excuse that an increasing number of asylum claims have placed an untenable weight on a system already weakened by a mounting backlog. Yet the international response to the Ukraine crisis has revealed how governments in the west can operate like well-oiled machines when they feel the need.
Applaud our government for the exemplary support provided to Ukrainians in need – now urge them to apply this same urgency and care to all refugees, equally.
Hermona Kuluberhan is an Ottawa-based writer currently completing a master’s in journalism at Carleton University.
