The Ontario Metropolis Centre of Excellence for Research in Immigration Studies (CERIS) has released its latest Policy Matters issue. The Sept 2009 edition is a summary of a report entitled An Analysis of the challenges faced by francophone female refugees living in Ontario and separated from their chilren.
Authors Emile Greon, Michele Kerist, and Francosie Magunira examine the challenges faced by Francophone refugee mothers in Ontario who are separated from their children. The authors make several recommendations for policy change, including:
1) Allow children and spouses to join women refugee claimants, and have their paperwork process from within Canada.
2) Improve the availability of legal information about family reunification in French.
3) Ease the bureaucratic process.
4) Create positions for case workers to follow individual cases and track delays.
5) Enact an “action plan” to systematically present the findings to all stakeholders within one year.
The study was funded by the Ontario Movement for Francophone Immigrant Women.
