Housing migrants burdens Peel; Region wants province to reimburse $80,000 in unexpected costs and stabilize funding

From EndCanadianPoverty.ca

• Date: November 16th, 2007
• Source: Toronto Star
• Link to article: Housing migrants burdens Peel; Region wants province to reimburse $80,000 in unexpected costs and stabilize funding

"An influx of refugee claimants crossing the border has Peel Region scrambling to house families that turn up, suddenly and without status, on its doorstep.

In the past five months, Peel has spent more than $80,000 covering motel fees and food for 70 families - roughly 271 people - who have poured into the region.

With their worldly possessions stuffed into trunks and garbage bags, they have filtered into the GTA after fleeing a U.S. crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

Peel has resources to cope with its homeless and has invested in settlement services for landed immigrants. But officials don't believe they should be left to foot the bill for unexpected refugees who remain in limbo while awaiting a hearing.

"If they do have to stay in a hotel, we should be reimbursed," Janet Menard, Peel's director of transition and integration, said yesterday. "Where we have to go to extraordinary measures ... we should be reimbursed."

After a brief debate, Peel Region council resolved to ask the province to pay the motel and extra staff costs. It will also demand long-term funding for a problem that seems destined to grow as more migrants - fearing an increasingly hostile climate in the U.S. - filter north.

"If that's the case, this could be the tip of the iceberg," Menard said. "We're looking for stabilized funding to cover the costs of refugees."

Caught in the middle are the families, many of whom fled fearing deportation to danger in their native Colombia, Haiti or Mexico. The flood of cross-border migrants has slowed initial processing of asylum claims to six weeks, during which time they may not work or settle in.

Suitcases and teddy bears belonging to 16 such families lined a long hall at a Best Western hotel in Brampton yesterday, where some lived as long as three weeks.

Over lunch, they prepared to be shuffled, for the third time since arriving, to Peel's only family shelter. Until yesterday, it was capacity, filled with 19 refugee families.

Ana Cecilia, 48, and her family - mother, husband and two children, 9 and 13 - turned up at the shelter exhausted and with nowhere else to go. But she wasn't complaining. "We don't have money to pay for a hotel, for food or for gas," she said. "We're tired. But it's okay. We're free - this is more important."

Magaly Fernandez and her husband John drove from Florida with their girls, 2 and 3. They're glad to be in a place where, once they have permits, they'll be allowed to work.

"In the U.S., you feel like you're a criminal because you're always running," John said. "But we're not criminals. We want to settle down and make a life."

It's not clear how so many refugees landed in Peel rather than Toronto. But it is apparent the influx is flooding reception centres across the province. The province recently reimbursed Windsor for $110,000 in costs it incurred coping with the flow coming from Detroit.

While Toronto officials say the city shelter system can absorb about 200 families who have turned up there since August, Caroline Davis, executive director of Catholic Crosscultural Services, said Peel doesn't have resources.

The Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration confirmed yesterday it will speed up the eligibility process for refugees in shelters, to get them off the public dime sooner.

Menard said the goal was not to increase the shelters, but to eliminate the need by integrating people as quickly as possible."