When Immigration lawyer Hana Marku opened her email weeks ago to a demacrated baby in the Gaza Strip, she said she felt helpless.
The child is among the 50 Palestinians that the headquarters based in Toronto is representing. She said that each one was blocked without explanation when submitting applications under the temporary visa program that the Canadian government created to help them flee from the Israel-Ahamas War.
“She is a girl who was born last year, and was born in this war,” Marku said. “A baby whose bones can only have a photo of her.”
Marku said his clients in the Gaza Strip face death every day. One escaped for little to be killed when he brought flour home after a bomb fell close, he said. Some have witnessed loved ones crushed by the fall of rubble.
The situation has led her to request a decision of the Federal Court that declares that the Immigration Department has irrarhrazonably delayed the processing of her clients’ requests, and that she acted unfairly by not explaining the reason for delays. He also wants the Federal Court to order the Immigration Department to reopen and consider the requests of its clients.
The Canadian government opened the Temporary Visa program in January 2024. As part of the process, the family members based in Canada were asked to submit documents and then expect a reference code that allows them to finish their requests.
HIT CAP PROGRAM
Marku said that despite the fact that all his clients apply within a month of the opening of the program, none had the opportunity to complete their requests, because their codes never arrived. The immigration department never communicated with its clients to say why they had not received codes or to explain the status of their requests either, he says.
Then, this March, more than a year after the program was opened, each of its clients received an email from the Canadian government indicating that the program had reached its limit and closed, and that none of them could complete the requests.
Marku says that the government did not follow the procedures established for the Visa program.
“The instructions, on which the applicants were based, said that while the presentations of the web form were complete, they would receive codes or an explanation about why they are not eligible,” he said.
The Canadian press spoke with a family member of several of Marku’s clients, and agreed not to name him for his fears that revealing his identity would put his family at risk in the Gaza Strip.
He said he submitted applications for six family members on January 9, 2024, but none was approved under the program.
“We continue the process,” he said.
He said that their sister and mother were allowed to enter Canada through a separate visa program, and since then they have requested the refugee status.
He said he had to take the matter in his own hands to get them out of Gaza, since Canada could not evacuate them. In April 2024, he flew to Cairo, paying US $ 15,000 in cash to smugglers who managed to transport two sisters and their mother through Rafah’s border to Egypt on April 28.
“They were lucky,” he said.
One of his sisters remains in Cairo, he said, because he could not obtain approval to come to Canada.
The Canadian government supported the UN discovery
Marku presented a letter to the Federal Court this August requesting an emergency hearing to solve the problem.
“According to the rules of the Federal Court, there is no mechanism to seek an accelerated decision at this stage. It simply does not exist,” he said, saying that his request for an emergency hearing was not intended to serve as a legal argument, but as a humanitarian supplication.
The court has recognized Marku’s application, but she said she did not indicate how she plans to advance.
The Canadian government publicly supported a finding supported in August that the famine is happening in the Gaza Strip.
In a letter obtained by the Canadian press, the lawyers of the immigration department wrote that although they recognize that the situation in Gaza is difficult, the case is ultimately useless and debatable.
“The policy limit has already been reached,” they wrote before the Federal Court. “Receiving unique codes cannot help them with their situations in Gaza.”
In a statement, the immigration department told the Canadian pressure that its policy only demanded that you process the requests submitted before it reaches its limit. The department declined to comment on the litigation.
As of July 29, a total of 880 Palestinians have arrived in Canada through the Visa program, which had a 5,000 limit, according to the Canada Immigration Department. More than 1,775 have also left Gaza and have been approved under the program, but they have not yet arrived in the country.
Another 400 arrived through other immigration programs, he said.
