Congrats, you’re now the proud sponsor of a family of Syrian-Canadians! What now?
Our application to sponsor a family of Syrian Refugees to settle in Calgary has been accepted! What comes next? We turned to Leen Al Zaibak, a Lifeline Syria board member, and Mustafa Alio, a co-founder of the Refugee Career Jumpstart Project, for advice.
First, some background: Syria’s civil war has forced nearly 8 million people to become displaced within their country and another 4 million to become refugees. Canada has committed to #welcomerefugees through a mix of public, private, and nonprofit efforts to settle these newcomers across the country. I’m working with some friends in Calgary within the federal government’s Group of Five program, in which five or more Canadians get together to sponsor a refugee (or refugee family) by providing social and financial support for their first year in Canada. This is a great program, because the government chips in financial support and additional health care coverage, in addition to carrying out screening and health checks, setting up their permanent resident status, and flying them around the world to settle in your neighborhood. You can read our tips on the paperwork process (and share your own) here.
Here’s what we learned from Leen and Mustafa about working with our family of newcomers.
Trust is key
Refugees by definition have been through traumatic experiences — for example, the UNHCR reports that 43% of Syrian refugees referred for resettlement in 2013–14 were submitted under the Survivor of Violence/Torture category. As Leen explained, they’re coming from a context where for generations, people were afraid to say the president’s name and political gatherings were forbidden. So they’re not used to being able to be fully open with strangers. Assad used a vast network of informants to keep people in line, so even in Canada, they may feel guarded around people, including other Syrians. Establishing trust and a basic comfort level will therefore be a top priority.
How religious are Syrians?
We’ve read that in Syria, 87% of the population is Muslim (74% Sunni and 13% Alawi, Ismaili and Shia). Another 10% are Christian and 3% are Druze. We wondered how religious our assigned family is likely to be.
Leen and Mustafa pointed out that it’s a complicated question. While Syria is predominantly Muslim, Assad did not run a religious state. Sunni-Shia tensions were not much of an issue, with most Syrians identifying as Syrian first, and often intermarrying. On the other hand, Mustafa has noticed that, having been through trauma and being displaced from their culture, many newcomers lean on their faith a bit more during their first few months in Canada.
If they’re Muslim, they may appreciate information about local mosques, and/or a Qibla pointer in their living space, so that they can pray in the direction of Mecca. For food, since most meat in Syria is halal whereas meat in Canada is generally not, you can ask them if their diet is strictly halal or whether they are OK with meat that is not technically halal as long as it’s not pork. Small gestures like this, Mustafa urged, would go a long way in letting our newcomers know that we are there to help.
Finding a primary interpreter
Our assigned family, like 90% of Syrians, speaks Arabic. We do not. So our first questions were about interpreters. We have four local Arabic-speaking friends lined up, most of whom are Lebanese, which is great, because Lebanese and Jordanian Arabic are the closest to the Arabic spoken in Syria. While having a deep bench might be helpful, Mustafa suggested that we find one person who can commit to being our primary interpreter. One interpreter will be able build familiarity and trust with our newcomers more quickly, and they will likely function as a cultural interpreter in addition to a linguistic one.
In our case, one of our potential interpreters is unabashedly gay, and we talked about whether this could be a barrier. Leen and Mustafa suggested that it might be, at least at first. Learning about and adapting to what is socially acceptable in Canada is part of any newcomer’s acclimation, and this likely won’t be an issue given some time. But in their first few days and weeks, when everything will be foreign and confusing, realistically speaking this might pose an extra challenge.
Our relationship as sponsors
Having sought out this opportunity and jumping through several bureaucratic hoops, as sponsors we’re pretty clear on our responsibilities, at least legally: We’re on the hook for a year’s worth of living expenses (minus the approximately $10K that the federal government will contribute through their Blended Visa Office-Referred Program), and a year of social and logistical support. After that, we hope we’ve built enough of a relationship with the family that we remain friends, but there’s no guarantees. They don’t have to become our friends, and as sponsors we have to be OK with that. But this Canadian model for refugee settlement is an unusual kind of relationship that might not be clear at first.
Leen recounted an example of a recent family sponsored by a friend of hers, who were very disoriented upon arrival and didn’t understand why this group of Canadians was taking them away to deposit them in a nicely furnished apartment. It took a few minutes to clarify what was going on, but according to Leen, within half an hour, the family was hugging and saying that their sponsors were now “family.” Note that Syrians tend to be more emotionally expressive than Canadians, who are friendly but reserved. According to Leen, this difference is part of the culture shock for many Syrians.
Over the first few weeks and months, we’ll aim to explain to our family more context about the sponsorship relationship — chiefly, that we’ll be supporting them financially for a year and that beyond that they’ll need to self-support (albeit with access to the same social services available to other Canadians).
But at first, the main thing we’ll want to convey is that we are there for them and that whenever they run into a problem or concern, we want to hear about it and that it’s our responsibility to help. And also, that we are doing this because we want to, and they won’t be in debt to us, literally or figuratively. As a sponsor, one of my biggest fears is that without the necessary level of trust or without understanding the nature of the relationship we hope to have with them, the family might run into a serious problem that needs attention, but not tell us about it.
Small talk
Learning English should be the family’s first priority for the first 3–6 months. Incoming Syrians are well aware that English (or French, in Québec) is their ticket to a successful life in Canada, and are keen to learn. There are government language training courses that we’ll need to help the parents enroll in, and the children will learn English at school. The language learning app/website Duolingo has Arabic support and Leen recommended it as a great tool for self-study.
In addition, we can call or meet with the family a few times a week for half an hour, to give them more language exposure. Mustafa suggested that hearing English will help them learn, and that for example, within a few months we could invite them to switch their television or laptop to English (for example, for subtitles). But, he cautioned, don’t ask them about language or politics. As they become comfortable with us, they’ll likely share stories about their lives, but these pretty loaded topics to start with. Likewise, we shouldn’t pressure them to talk about their occupation or plans to find a job in the first few months. Having the space to focus on adapting to Canada more generally and learning English will serve them well over the long term.
Job search
When the adults are more confident in English, hopefully around the six month mark, Mustafa suggests that we start asking them about career goals. What was your profession? What else did you do? What would you like to do in Canada? We can then figure out what training, connections, or other help we can provide.
We don’t expect this process to be easy, since our assigned family, like many of the Syrian refugees being brought to Canada, is also less affluent and less educated than their compatriots making their way to Europe. On the other hand, these people are survivors who have successfully navigated the asylum process and who have been providing for their children under much more difficult conditions than what they’ll face in Canada.
The binder
Lifeline Syria is focused on refugees settling in Toronto, but many of their resources, such as their Sponsorship Handbook, are helpful for sponsors across Canada. This 80 page PDF has a ton of information covering many logistical, financial, bureaucratic, and cultural issues that sponsors and refugee families will need to address. One thing the handbook suggests is to prepare a reference binder for our family, with essential information that is bilingual English (or French) as well as the refugees’ native language (Arabic, in our case), covering things like emergency situations and “911”; names, photos, and contact information for everyone in the sponsoring group; and information on being a privately sponsored refugee. Over time, they can add their notes and we can help them add and organize all the paperwork they accumulate.
There are a ton of things that we need to prepare, so hopefully we’ll get at least some of them done before we get a phone call from CPOW (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s Centralized Processing Office in Winnipeg) saying that our assigned family is getting on a plane to Calgary. (If you want to know about the paperwork and timeline that we’ve done so far to get to this point, please read about it here.)
Hearing from others who are going through this process would be extremely helpful, so if you are also sponsoring refugees or would like to do so, please make a note in the comments and let’s get in touch!
