Refugees rely on food banks, welfare years after arrival: report
Between 2016 and 2022, two-thirds of refugees were men under 29 from Syria and Afghanistan.
New data from the Department of Immigration revealed a concerning trend among government-sponsored refugees. Roughly a third rely on food banks, with more than half pocketing social assistance for at least five years.
“The resettlement program has an ultimate outcome of refugees living independently in Canadian society,” said the report Evaluation Of The Refugee Resettlement Program. It did not clearly articulate a pathway to weaning refugees off welfare.
Owing to legislative amendments in 2001, the federal government waived requirements for refugees to prove their reliance on social assistance.
From 2016 to 2022, Canadian governments accepted 88,838 government-assisted refugees, and another 119,000 who were privately sponsored, reported Blacklock’s. Two thirds were men under the age of 29 from Syria and Afghanistan.
“In their first year in Canada nearly a third of refugees (31 percent) always or often relied on food banks,” said Resettlement Programs. Of those who were assisted by the government, a whopping 80% relied on food banks at least once.
According to Statistics Canada, repealing the 1976 Immigration Act left foreigners unaccountable to taxpayers, as they no longer had to demonstrate their economic independence.
Most government assisted refugees (53%) also collected welfare cheques for at least their first five years in Canada, considerably more than privately sponsored refugees.
Canada now faces a record number of refugee claims, costing taxpayers billions of dollars to accommodate them. The Department of Immigration dictates that provinces are responsible for incurring the bill.
Paying for the more than 200,000 asylum claimants will cost taxpayers $16.35 billion a year, revealed the Department of Immigration. Wait times may exceed a whopping 44 months, including bogus claims, it said.
“An average refugee costs taxpayers $82,000 per refugee per year,” notes Conservative MP Arpan Khanna. Asylum seekers receive $81,760 per person annually in legal assistance, housing, food and medical care, which averages out to $11,260 more than the typical Canadian salary.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller acknowledged some foreigners exploit the generosity of Canadians with bogus refugee claims, remarks he reiterated in a statement to the Globe and Mail.
Miller admits the immigration system is “out of control,” owing to an unsustainable number of permanent and temporary residents residing in Canada, including foreign workers and international students.
Privately sponsored refugees, meanwhile, had measurably better outcomes in Canada, Blacklock’s learned. “Assistance rates are about 30 percent for privately sponsored refugees after their first year,” it said.
“Because of these changes refugees admitted after the Act may be more prone to relying on social assistance,” said the report From Adaptability To Vulnerability: Changes In Admission Criteria And Refugee Participation In Social Assistance.
“This is less likely for privately sponsored refugees who are more likely to have family or friends in Canada and are better positioned to find employment through sponsors,” it said.
More established immigrants and those born in Canada experience less financial hardship (29%) overall, reported True North.
However, a significant minority of newcomers have trouble making ends meet and are growing increasingly dissatisfied with their Canadian experience.
Almost half (43%) of “recent immigrants,” who emigrated as early as 2005, are dissatisfied with their quality of life, according to a new StatsCan survey. “Canadians pay a lot of taxes,” said one immigrant. “It’s scary,” said another. “They add up,” said a third.
Thus, a growing number of established immigrants, who arrived between 1982 and 2017, left Canada within five years, reads a StatsCan report. That jumps to one in six within 20 years of residency.
The trend of ‘onward migration’ has been steadily climbing since the 1980s, according to the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board of Canada — meaning refugees are more likely to stay.
Alex Dhaliwal
Calgary Based Journalist
Alex Dhaliwal is a Political Science graduate from the University of Calgary. He has actively written on relevant Canadian issues with several prominent interviews under his belt.
COMMENTS
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Bruce Atchison commented 2024-12-11 19:30:02 -0500Imagine how many needy Canadian citizens could be helped with $16,350,000,000. Instead, freeloaders, who have no excuse not to be working, lounge around on Social Assistance and laugh at we who work for a living. Send these men back to wherever they came from. They have no excuse for not contributing to Canada.
