Refugee Team News – April, 2025

Fundraising/Fashion Show

Click here for tickets

The Refugee team is hosting the Magic Carpet Fashion Show – produced by Ivan Sayers. The show will be in the VanU Sanctuary. There will also be sales of lightly used items before the show, at intermission, and after the show in Hewett Centre Hall. Join us at 2PM Saturday May 24. All proceeds go to support the work of the Refugee team. Click here for tickets.

Sponsorship News

All Sponsorship Agreement Holders in Canada have received their allocation of spaces for 2025. Due to changes in the Canadian Immigration policy, the IRCC has reduced spaces for each SAH by 20% for 2025. We do not disclose the actual number of our spaces. Due to the large size of our waiting list, the list is now closed until September, 2028.

2025 Applications

We will send notifications in April to people who are on our waiting list and are eligible for spaces this year.

Future Applications

Due to the large size of our waiting list and the limited number of spaces allocated to us, many candidates on our waiting list will remain on it for an extended time. We will send notifications in April to confirm that we have their information and that they remain on the list.

Previous Applications

We understand co-sponsors and their sponsored refugees are concerned about how and when their submitted application will be processed. The following IRCC web site should be used to check status of an application: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application/check-status.html

The IRCC will contact the refugee family directly (not the SAH or co-sponsor) by phone or email to schedule appointments for in-person
meetings.

After a submitted application has a G number from the IRCC, the SAH cannot enquire about the case unless there is a significant change in the status of the family (such as number of dependents or deportation) or 4 years have passed without progress on the application.

Recent Arrivals

Since the previous update, we have welcomed the following newcomers:

12 single Eritreans from Israel
A family of 2 and another of 4 Iranians from Turkey
A family of 5 Syrians from Turkey

Refugee applications April 2025 update

Refugee, Refugee Team4 days ago

Vancouver Unitarians Sponsorship Agreement Holder (VanU-SAH) operates under rules guided by the IRCC and we work with co-sponsors to sponsor refugees under the Private Sponsorship of Refugees program.

Interviews were held to screen new co-sponsor candidates for our waiting list on September 1, 2024 and September 8, 2024. Our waiting list is now very long and we are not accepting new requests.

The waiting list is closed until September 2028

Each year the IRCC agency of the Government of Canada allocates a limited number of spaces to VanU-SAH and unfortunately this is already much less than our waiting list. We are sad to say that we cannot help you right now.

In the mean time other avenues may be available to you. You can find information on the IRCC website here:

Refugee Team News – September 2024

Refugee TeamSeptember 14, 2024

2024 Intake of new candidates for sponsorship

During the year we received many requests to help with sponsorship and we advised prospective co-sponsors to come to the campus September 1 or September 8 for in-person interviews to make a preliminary assessment of eligibility to join our waiting list. We had an overwhelming response. Based on our expectation of IRCC allocation of spaces and the anticipated size of our waiting list we decided that we will not be accepting new sponsorship requests for some time. We are sad to say that:

The waiting list is closed until September 2027

Update on Recent Fund Raising in August

Refugee Team members had a sale table at the Bizarre Bazaar event organized by BC Society of the Museum of Original Costume (SMOC) at the Van Dusen Gardens. This netted over $1100 for the refugee fund.

Update on Recent or Imminent Arrivals

Long processing times in the overseas embassies mean that arrivals we see now are from applications sent in previous years. Since the previous meeting of the refugee team, VanU SAH and co-sponsors met the following newcomers.

July:

one Afghan family of four from Pakistan
single Eritrean from Israel

August

one Syrian family of four from Saudi Arabia
two single Eritreans from Israel
single Afghan from Pakistan
single Palestinian from Jordan

September

one Syrian family of five from Saudi Arabia

Update on Ongoing Sponsorships

During each refugee team meeting we hear status updates from team members who are monitoring newcomers still in their first year of settlement. For privacy reasons, we can’t report specifics here but in general:

We currently have 36 ongoing family sponsorships.

Since our last meeting we have 12 sponsorships ending by October 1.

There are several applications that are in the interview stage but we don’t know if anyone will arrive before the end of October.

SAH Association Conference upcoming

This annual meeting will be held in Toronto in October. We will attend virtually in order to hear updates from IRCC and the SAH council and contribute to lobbying efforts by SAHs about operational concerns with the IRCC.