The Labyrinthine Nightmare of Canada's Palestinian Family Reunification Program
Zero Palestinians from Gaza have arrived in Canada under its temporary visa program, including relatives Mahmoud Al-Astal is trying to bring to Calgary.
Tl;dr
Not one Palestinian from Gaza who applied for Canada’s temporary visa program has arrived in Canada.
The program’s application requires people to disclose information including every job they’ve had since they were 16, and any injuries or scars and how they got them, before their applications are sent to Israeli authorities for approval.
Mahmoud Al-Astal, a Calgarian who came to Canada from Gaza in 2017, says Palestinian visa applicants face an additional barrier of getting into Egypt to have their biometrics taken at the Canadian embassy, yet they cannot enter Egypt legally without the visa they’re trying to obtain.
Gazans whose families have paid thousands of dollars to get them into Egypt say they’ve heard nothing from Canadian authorities.
At the beginning of the year, the Canadian government announced that it would allow 1,000 Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombs and bullets in Gaza to stay with family in Canada for up to three years.
Since then, 986 people from Gaza have completed the application process, out of which a dozen have been approved. Yet, as of writing, zero Palestinians fleeing Gaza have arrived in Canada.
Contrast this with the Ukrainian emergency visa program, which had no limit on the number of applications, resulting in the approval of almost a million Ukrainians, of which just 250,000 arrived.
But the difference isn’t only quantitative. The visa application process for Palestinians is “strikingly different than what is ordinarily required for a visitor visa application” and is even more stringent than a permanent residency application, according to Toronto-based immigration lawyer Pantea Jafari.
Applicants are expected to list every job they’ve had since they were 16, with full details about their roles, responsibilities and any disciplinary issues; every address they’ve lived at; links to all their social media accounts; and, most appallingly for people fleeing what the International Court of Justice says might amount to genocide, any injuries or scars that have required medical attention and how they got them.
The sponsoring relative has to attest that they’re not on welfare, will be able to sponsor them privately and pay all the required application fees, which were waived for Ukrainians.
Once the applicant has provided all these details, they receive a code to apply for a visa. But at the same time, their applications are sent to Israeli authorities — the same people entering the sixth month of bombing and starving them — for a background check.
While they await the go-ahead from Israel, they have to figure a way to get out of Gaza, which is under a stringent Israeli and Egyptian blockade.
This often requires paying a bribe, ranging anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 (USD) per person to get onto the Egyptian side of the border, with the cost growing daily as the situation in Gaza grows more dire.
Mahmoud Al-Astal has helped settle dozens of refugee families of various nationalities in Calgary since he arrived as a refugee from Gaza in 2017; now he’s navigating the labyrinthine process of getting his family from Gaza to Calgary.
He said he’s never seen a visa application process like this one.
“It’s one of the worst applications you could ever see in your life,” said Al-Astal, who founded the Bridges Association for Newcomers in 2021. “It drives you crazy. Like, come on, guys.”
He said it’s not just Ukrainian refugees who were welcomed to Canada in a way that sharply contrasted with Palestinians.
Canadian authorities immediately prioritized visa applications and waived certain fees for people fleeing Sudan’s brutal civil war, in which 14,000 people have been killed and 8 million have been displaced since April 2023, with no cap on the number of people accepted for temporary residency — similar to the program for Ukrainian refugees.
More recently, the government announced it will accept applications from upwards of 3,250 Sudanese-Canadians to obtain permanent residency for their Sudanese relatives — a program whose limitations and lack of support for applicants have been likened to the temporary visa program for Gazans as “inadequate and discriminatory.”
But for all the Sudanese program’s inadequacies, Al-Astal said the program for Gazans is even worse, borne out by the fact that not a single Palestinian has made it into the country.
The Palestinian visa program’s stringency has been defended on national security grounds.
But even if one accepts that the prospect of Hamas leaders using a temporary visa to flee to Canada is real, one could make the same case of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion or Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, yet neither Ukrainian nor Sudanese refugees face the same barriers as Palestinian refugees.
“It is a very, very small share of the population that is, in any conflict, involved in human rights violations and radical ideologies," immigration lawyer Aidan Simardone told the CBC.
It’s only Palestinians who are expected to prove that they’re not violent extremists before they’re even considered for entry into Canada, criminalizing them before they even arrive in Canada — if they ever arrive at all.
Al-Astal has a large family. He said he’s lost at least 225 relatives in the Israeli onslaught — a microcosm of the 31,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Palestinian fighters killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages.
Prior to Oct. 7, Al-Astal had five siblings, his father-in-law and father living in Gaza, spread between Gaza City, Rafah, Khan Yunis, Gaza City and Beit Lahia.
All their homes have either been confirmed, or are strongly suspected of being, among the 300,000 homes that have been razed — 70% of the enclave’s total housing — since the war began.
Al-Astal provided The Orchard with video of what remains of the house, which he, his brothers and father helped build, and neighbourhood where he was raised in Khan Yunis.
“All our memories were there,” he said.
Al-Astal applied as soon as he was able for eight of his in-laws and 34 of his own relatives to come to Canada “so that they can start a new life.”
When he spoke to The Orchard on March 8, only his wife’s side of the family had received their application code, but they face a catch-22.
In order to get a Canadian visa, Palestinians need to go to the nearest embassy to have their biometrics entered. If you’re in Gaza, that embassy is in Cairo, Egypt.
But the Egyptian authorities will only let them across the border, at least through official channels, if they have a valid Canadian visa, so they remain stuck in the overcrowded border city of Rafah, which is expected to face an Israeli invasion in short order.
Al-Astal said he suggested an “easy solution” to the Ministry of Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees. They could simply take the biometric machine to the Rafah crossing to process applicants in Gaza.
“That’s it. Easy peasy, but we’ve been stuck right now for two months,” he said.
Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Marc Miller said at a March 1 press conference that he had a “polite conversation” with the Israeli ambassador, in which he expressed his “frustration” with the inability to get fleeing Palestinians across the border into Egypt.
“We are all failing Gazans,” Miller said, as if Palestinians like Al-Astal, who are trying to get their families into Canada, are to blame as much as members of the Canadian, Israeli and Egyptian governments.
Afterwards, it appears that Miller “gave up and then nothing happened,” said Al-Astal, who is far from the only Palestinian-Canadian exasperated by the Canadian government’s apparent ineptitude.
A 20-year-old woman from Gaza with a Canadian aunt made it into Egypt in February, after paying $70,000 (CAD) to a private company. But she told The Canadian Press a month later that she hadn’t heard a word from the Canadian government about her family’s visas.
"They fooled us," the aunt, who paid the required application fees, told CP, who didn’t identify either relative to avoid retribution from Canadian or Egyptian authorities.
"There is a big question mark about the level of effort that Canada is putting on this program.”
Rani Hemaid, who lives in Hamilton, paid thousands of dollars to get his parents, brother and niblings into Egypt from Gaza in December.
Since they escaped Gaza before the visa application process began, it’s unclear whether they’re even eligible to come to Canada. But they’ve heard no word from Canadian authorities and are running out of money.
"We look at it, as Palestinian Canadians, that the Canadian government has scammed us, has fooled us," he said. "They do not care about us."
Palestinian-Canadian community organizer Omar Mansour shared this assessment.
“We’re left in limbo to the point where people actually are saying that this is a whole scam, just a PR thing so the government can look good,” he told The Guardian. “It’s like throwing a bone for a dog. It can’t get more dehumanizing than this.”