User:M stanford/sandbox

Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program

The Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program is an Canadian initiative established in 1978 under Operation Lifeline, whereby refugees can resettle in Canada with support and funding from private or joint government-private sponsorship. The program was established in 1978, and it has since resettled and provided support for over 200,000 refugees under various initiatives and with fluctuating annual intakes. It has influenced refugee policy in other Commonwealth countries, such as the UK and Australia, and the the Canadian system itself is constantly under reform to increase the involvement of refugees shaping their own resettlement experience.

Background
The origins of the Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR) Program are in the Indochina refugee crisis in the 1970s and was initiated after the appropriate legal framework had been provided through the 1976 Immigration Act.

History

 * 1979 - 29,269: Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees settled under the initiative, and more throughout the early 1980s,


 * 1994 - 1998: 1,800 Afghan Ismaili refugees resettled through Project FOCUS, whereby the government sponsored refugees for three months, and fundraisers supported the following nine months. These cases were technically counted as Government Assisted Refugees (GARs) in a 3/9 joint sponsorship model.
 * 2001: the Canadian Government piloted a 4/8 joint sponsorship model.
 * 2001 - 2008: Privately Sponsored Refugee (PSR) numbers fluctuated around 3,000 per annum.
 * 2009 - 2011: PSR intake increased to around 5,000 per annum.
 * 2011: the government introduced a blended 3/9 program for Iraqi refugees, and another with Rainbow Refugee Committee to support LGBTQ refugees. New restrictions were also introduced, including limits on PSRs, caps the number of refugees who could be sponsored by missions abroad and on applications for sponsorships by SAHs in order to improve management. Regulatory changes were implemented to formalise applications, which limited the eligibility for Groups of Five and Community Sponsors. The age of dependency was reduced from 22 to 19, which made fewer refugee families eligible for sponsorship.
 * 2012: intake of PSRs dropped by 24% from 2011 levels.
 * 2013: the government pledged to resettle 1,300 Syrian refugees by the end of 2014.
 * 2015: PSR numbers exceeded that of GARs.
 * October 2015: the Liberals pledged to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada before 2016.
 * December 2016: in partnership with the UNHCR and the Open Society Foundations, the Government of Canada launched a major initiative in order to globally promote the PSR Program.
 * 2018: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada aims to facilitate the resettlement of 18,000 PSRs by the end of 2018.

Organization
There are 3 types of private sponsor in Canada, which can be applied for directly to the Government of Canada or through Lifeline Syria.

1. Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAHs)
Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAHs) must be incorporated organisations that have made formal agreements with the government for assist a refugee family for twelve months. They are generally expected to sponsor multiple refugees each year and to have had prior sponsorship experience. 75% SAHs are religious, ethnic, community, or humanitarian organisations.

2. Groups of Five
A smaller number of refugees are sponsored not by SAHs but by Groups of Five, which are groups consisting of a minimum of five Canadian citizens or permanent residents over the age of 18 who sponsor at least one refugee to settle in their local community in Canada. Groups of Five can chose to sponsor applicants who have already been granted refugee status.

3. Community sponsors
Community sponsors must be organisations, associations, or corporations in the community the refugee(s) will settle.

Lifeline Syria
Lifeline Syria was launched in June 2015 as a result of the humanitarian crisis resulting from the Syrian Civil Wa r. It's main aim was to aid the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the GTA, including aiding assisting sponsorship groups with sponsorship applications. Lifeline Syria also helps people form Groups of Five by connecting those who wish to privately sponsor refugees and who live in nearby communities.

Sponsor Requirements
Sponsors must meet the criteria for sponsorship, which includes being able to provide social and emotional support, as well as residential and financial support, food and clothing. The sponsors are legally bound to provide income support, which generally ends after twelve months. Private funds provide for the first year of resettlement; while government covers health care/ children's education. In the second year of resettlement, if the refugees become permanent residents when they arrive, they will be able to apply for means-tested governmental social welfare benefits if their sponsor has not been successful in helping them find employment.

Semi-Private Sponsorship
Private sponsors and the Government of Canada work in partnership through the Blended Visa Office-Referred (BVOR) Program. The UNHCR refers refugees to the program, following which the government sponsors them for up to six months through the Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP), and then they are privately sponsored for the following six months. The goal of the BVOR Program is to engage the Canadian government, the UNHCR and private sponsors in Canada in a three way partnership.

Quebec
Quebec has a difference process for refugee sponsorship, through which groups of two to five people can apply to privately sponsor, and to do so they must reside in Quebec. This sponsorship process require cultural obligations of private sponsors, including organising attendance of French speaking classes for the refugees and informing them about Quebec society and culture.

On January 27 2017, Quebec froze the intake of new private sponsorship applications until August 2018 due to the high number of applications already in the system, with the processing time for submitted applications between eight and eighteen months.

Successes
Private sponsorship in Canada is estimated to have resettled 280,000 refugees since starting, while also helping with family reunification, and also maintained popularity and public support despite the media's criminalisation of refugees as 'queue jumpers.' It has been argued that Privately Sponsored Refugees (PSRs) are more likely to successfully integrate than Government Assisted Refugees (GARs), in particular it has been praised for integrating refugees faster into the job market. It is further argued that the PSR Program should be seen as an example and opportunity for development in international refugee law to globally enable more refugees to access their entitled protection.

Controversy
It is argued that private sponsorship is not a substitute for government sponsorship, but should be in addition in order to increase protection space. There are concerns that the support of PSRs is overly dependent on a few individuals and organisations. Private sponsorship has been described as a lengthly process with often (years) long waiting lists. In particular, the usage prima facie refugee status (rather than individual determination), and this has made the process more easy and faster in regions of origin, but far longer for private sponsorship of non-Syrian refugees. Cultural differences have been argued to make the private sponsor support itself challenging, with differing expectations about behaviour and some sponsors acting paternalistically, this has in some cases led to resentment between the refugee and sponsoring groups.

International Response
Until recently, Canada was the only country to offer private refugee sponsorship, yet now both Australia and the UK are working on new private sponsorship programs for refugees. For Australia, the senior staff of Settlement Services International (SSI) and Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) met in Canada and Geneva in June 2017 to discuss the possibilities of adapting a private sponsorship scheme similar to that of Canada. The UK is working towards deepening its community sponsorship scheme, with £1million being provided between 2017 and 2019 to train groups signing up to sponsorship.

Summarising wikipedia experience

 * I have 27 reference, 6 of which are from peer reviewed journal articles. I chose to use more references from governmental websites as the majority of this wikipedia article is in regard to the practical workings. The peer reviewed journal articles have been particularly helpful in reviewing the successes and controversies, as well as the international responses.
 * Consider the following questions as you reflect on your Wikipedia assignment:
 * Critiquing articles: How did you approach critiquing the article you selected for this assignment? How did you decide what to add to your chosen article?
 * As there was very little content of the wikipedia article I decided to edit, there was clearly a lot to add. Firstly, I looked for information that I was out of date, inaccurate and by unreliable sources and I edited accordingly.
 * Summarising your contributions: include a summary of your edits and why you felt they were a valuable addition to the article. How does your article compare to earlier versions?
 * The original article: "The Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program is a program whereby refugees can enter Canada with support and funding from a private sponsor, as opposed to in a government-sponsored program, where the government would be paying for the refugees. The program was established in 1978, and in 2013, it had resettled 6,623 refugees. A 2007 study released by the Canadian government found that refugees who settled in Canada through the private sponsorship program became independent much more quickly than did those sponsored by the government."     I have changed and added points including:
 * "as opposed to a government-sponsored program" because as shown in my section on BVORs, sponsorship can also be semi-private.
 * "where the government would be paying for the refugees"- would be better phrased as "whereby the government provides financial support/ financially supports refugees in their first 6 months - a year of resettlement" (with citation)
 * "whereby refugees can enter Canada" -> "settle in Canada"
 * 2013 resettlement figure can be updated
 * 2007 - I will use a study that is more recent
 * "from a private sponsor" (doesn't take into account multiple sponsors) -> "from private sponsorship"
 * There are 3 references in the original article, all of which are from newspapers, and therefore I have found information from sources with less potential for bias.
 * I have added sections on the following:
 * background, including a brief timeline, because I feel that it is important to outline the changes to the program which have occurred and therefore how they have influence the number of PSR admissions.
 * the organisation, because to explain the PSR Program it is important to cover the different forms of private sponsorship and who they involve. Furthermore, I have included a small section on Quebec as it is important for readers not to assume that the PRS Program is the same across all of Canada.
 * the results, including the successes and controversy. I have aimed to keep both parts to this section roughly the same size so to not suggest a bias, and I have used sources that appear to lack bias to support this information.
 * international response, because I feel that it is important to situate the PSR Program in a global context, and show some of its global influences in policy.
 * My article is more informative than the previous article, and is based on more reliable information, and it is structured into multiple sections (as the original was only one small article).
 * Peer Review:
 * My work was not peer reviewed, and when I looked into peer reviewing other articles, the majority were still in bullet point form and therefore it was difficult to analyse the work as a whole. However, I did find that my peers' articles generally included a substantial number of peer reviewed journal articles, and very few newspaper articles and other potentially unreliable sources. Some tended to use generalising statements or be written with a slightly biased tone. Overall, however, they appeared to have researched extensively.
 * Feedback: Did you receive feedback from other Wikipedia editors, and if so, how did you respond to and handle that feedback? I did not receive feedback.
 * Wikipedia generally: What did you learn from contributing to Wikipedia? How does a Wikipedia assignment compare to other assignments you've done in the past? How can Wikipedia be used to improve public understanding of our field/your topic? Why is this important?
 * This was different from most assignments I have done as it was more practical, and it is exciting that my work could be 'published' when moved from my sandbox. I think that wikipedia needs to have more information about refugee sponsorship in Canada, and I feel that a page on GARs would be useful for the general population. This is important because there are still large influxes of refugees to Canada (see article for reference) and therefore it is important for the public to access a clear forum to display their options.