Family prays Canada's special visa program for Gaza will reunite them after 21-month delay

Mona Alatbash gathers her children and married man, apiece of them either carrying a chairman or a torch, and treks to a nearby edifice — her phone signal there is stronger than the tent in the Khan Younis displacement camp where the family shelters.

On this recent night in southern Gaza, they find a dark corner and place the plastic chairs side by side. The phone rings. The video call from her sister Eman in Cobourg, Ont., lights Mona's face.

In a low voice, she asks her sister for updates. The family had applied to be admitted to Canada through the country's special measures program for extended family of Palestinian Canadians.

But nearly two years later, there is no news about their request.

Palestinian Canadians say getting family out of Gaza is taking too long

In January 2024, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) launched the program for extended families of Canadians and permanent residents in Gaza. Some families have resorted to bribes to get their loved ones to neighbouring countries — while dealing with stalled applications for their Canadian visas.

Eman has lived in Canada for 10 years and is a single mother of two. She applied through the program on Jan. 9, 2024, the first day it opened.

When they received an email in April 2024 that they were at the biometrics screening phase, Eman paid $5,000 per person in bribes to smuggle her father, brother, another sister and nieces and nephews out of Gaza. She did not have enough money to cover the cost of smuggling out Mona and her family.

Canada was not able to evacuate anyone from the enclave, citing the closed borders and airspace.

Eman's mom was able to come to Canada with a visitor visa before the war began. Since then, the family has been split between Cobourg, Cairo and Gaza as their applications are stuck in the security screening phase. 

She is desperate to get them all here. Eman has already lost one of her brothers to the war, in an Israeli sniper attack, she said. She said her brother Ahmed was surrounded by tanks and drones and shot in the head.

They spoke on condition they not be named, since they were not authorized to publicly comment on the situation.

The sources said there weren't enough funds made available to process the thousands of files. The program's 5,000 spots are filled and it is closed to new applicants.

"Funding came second. We had to push it out and just announce it without anyone approving [funding]," said one source. 

The second source said the government also lacked enough Arabic speakers.

"Screening for Gaza needs to be done by people familiar with the Arabic language," they said, adding it is not easy to find, for example, 100 more Arabic speakers to work for the Canada Border Services Agency.

The source said there were security concerns within the government about a lack of information on the applicants.

Pantea Jafari, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, says security screening delays of over a year are not normal for similar programs. 

She pointed to court decisions that say delayed security screenings "because of actions of third parties that you have no control over" shouldn't stop the process.

"In some situations, the duration would have been too long and they would be required to move forward," Jafari said. 

Eman said the stress over trying to reunite her family safely in Canada has started taking a toll on her health. She continues to hope for a miracle.

"I have been affected by everything going on in Gaza and with my family," she said. "I can't sleep normally thinking that I might lose someone else." 

After the video calls are done, Eman takes her daughter to a nearby park to play. She said her children ask about their cousins, aunts, uncles and grandfather all the time. 

"My child Zahed is four years old," she said. "And every time he sees a flight in the sky, he prays, 'I hope the next flight will have my grandpa and my uncle and cousins.'"

Producer

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