Achi news desk-
Tamer Jarada says she couldn’t believe it when she heard for the first time that her sister-in-law and her son had arrived safely out of Gaza.
“Once they left it was a happy moment for my wife and me and even our children because they really miss their cousin,” said Jarada.
Aasma Almasri, 27, and her five-year-old son Yousef arrived in Cairo on March 28. They were the first of 17 family members that Jarada, a Palestinian Canadian living in Calgary, is trying to bring to Canada under Ottawa’s special temporary visa program.
On April 4, Jarada’s sister Ashjan AbuRabee and her four children, aged between two months and 14, also made it safely out of Gaza. Her first phone call from Egypt with her brother was emotional.
“It was full of screams, laughter and we also cried a lot because we just remembered our late family members who are no longer around,” Jarada recalled.
At the end of October, Jarada and AbuRabee lost their parents, two sisters and 13 other family members in an Israeli airstrike. Since then, Jarada has been trying to bring his surviving family members to Canada. In January, the Canadian government opened a pathway for Canadian citizens and permanent residents to obtain visas for extended family members in Gaza but the process soon ended.
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Last month, the minister for immigration, refugees and citizenship called the program a failure.
“This is a program we knew from the start it could be a failure, so far it’s a failure and it’s something we need to acknowledge,” Marc Miller told Global News on March 20 .
Under the program, once visa applicants receive initial approval they must travel to Cairo, Egypt to submit biometric data, including their fingerprints and photos. Citizenship and Immigration Canada says getting applicants out of Gaza has been difficult.
“Movement out of Gaza remains limited and unpredictable,” a spokesperson said in an email to Global News. “We have submitted the names of people who passed preliminary eligibility and admissibility reviews to local authorities for approval, however, Canada does not control who or when someone can leave Gaza.”
That’s why Canadian Palestinian families, like the Jaradas, are turning elsewhere for help.
“It is a very complicated process involving an Egyptian employee who has the authority to put names on one of the lists (of people approved to cross) at the Rafah (border) crossing points, ” said Jarada.
The process is also expensive. Jarada says he has loaned or raised $69,000 so far to facilitate the departure of 10 relatives from Gaza.
“I have no choice but to get this money already,” he said. “We buy the lives of our family members.”
As of April 8, the government says 108 people who have left Gaza without facilitation from Canada have been approved to come to Canada.
10 members of Jarada’s family in Egypt are now working to complete their visa applications, as Jarada works to bring his seven remaining loved ones to safety.
& copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
