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Language courses more critical than ever for refugees to Canada

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Asam Aldori narrows his eyes and knits his bushy brow.

He’s choosing his words carefully.

“This country protected me — helped me, saved me and my family,” he says in broken English. “That means I must know the culture and must connect with the people: do something for this country.”

Fifty years old, Aldori lives with his three children in a modest apartment in Ottawa’s Vanier neighbourhood.

It’s a world away from their native Baghdad: a city they had to flee in 2007, after al-Qaeda threatened to kill Aldori for his work with a prominent Iraqi politician.

The family escaped to the Syrian capital of Damascus. Four years later, war found them again.

When they arrived in Ottawa as government-assisted refugees in June 2015, the Aldoris faced a challenge shared by a growing number of refugees who call Canada home: learning English or French.

According to analysis of data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 54 per cent of refugees who arrived in Canada in 2014 didn’t know either English or French. It was the first time since 2002 that more than half of refugees arriving in Canada weren’t familiar with either of the country’s official languages.

Though learning a new language can be a daunting challenge — especially later in life — it’s one Aldori is determined to overcome.

“Language is very important here. Because if I want to work, I must talk. If I go out shopping, I must talk,” he says.

“I don’t sit in my home and talk only Arabic. No,” he adds, shaking his head. “I go out and talk — with anyone.”

Speaking to the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights last May, federal Immigration Minister John McCallum said language training is a “top priority” when it comes to refugees.

It’s a priority that Emilie Coyle knows well.

“It’s paramount,” she says. “It’s the first thing you have work on — that and getting gainful employment.”

Coyle is the senior director of newcomer services with the YMCA-YWCA of the National Capital Region. Her team includes Ottawa’s Language Assessment and Referral Centre, which determines newcomers’ ability to read, write, speak, and listen in either English or French.

Coyle and her colleagues are seeing more and more refugees with little to no knowledge of English or French. Of all the Syrian refugees assessed by the centre since April, 84 per cent were found to be illiterate in their own language, never mind English or French.

That shouldn’t be surprising, she adds, because the government purposefully resettled the most vulnerable of refugees.

With so many refugees having received little in the way of formal schooling, Coyle says language schools are trying to develop new approaches to allow students to learn outside the classroom — and maybe even find work, too.

“It’s really unrealistic for us to think that they can be spending all this time sitting in a chair in a classroom,” she says. “Contrary to what some people believe, refugees are not here to live off the system.”

Refugees in Canada - Arrivals vs. Language Course Participation

Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (Facts and Figures 2014). (Graphic credit: Marc-André Cossette)

For now, Aldori is more than happy to be attending ESL courses five days a week, between 9 a.m. and noon from Monday to Friday. He started only two months after he first arrived, and he’s progressed two levels.

But it’s his children’s own progress that he is most proud of. None of his three kids spoke English when they came to Canada, but Aldori says two of them are already at the top of their class in school.

“It’s a good life and a safe life,” he says. “I and my family are very lucky.”

Originally from Baghdad, Asam Aldori and his three children arrived in Ottawa as refugees in June 2015. Aldori attends ESL courses five days a week to learn English. (Photo credit: Marc-André Cossette)
Originally from Baghdad, Asam Aldori and his three children arrived in Ottawa as refugees in June 2015. Aldori attends ESL courses five days a week to learn English. (Photo credit: Marc-André Cossette)

Mediterranean refugee and migrant deaths threaten to set grim new record

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3,171 refugees and migrants died or disappeared attempting to cross the Mediterranean during the first eight months of 2016, a 20 per cent increase compared to the same period last year.

The startling figure is the result of analysis of data made available by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Julia Black leads the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, which documents migrant deaths worldwide. “If the pace keeps up,” she says, “we are on track to have the most deaths in the Mediterranean (ever recorded in a single year).”

Syrian and Iraqi refugees arrive on the island of Lesvos in Greece. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Syrian and Iraqi refugees arrive on the island of Lesvos in Greece. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Central Mediterranean route, which connects North Africa to Italy, saw the highest number of deaths this year, claiming 2,719 lives between January and August. The route has long been recognized as the deadliest crossing in the Mediterranean by groups such as the IOM and Médecins Sans Frontières. But Black says new smuggling tactics have led to more deaths this year.

“Now that there are a lot of rescue operations off the coast of Libya,” says Black, “smugglers will basically equip a boat, often overload it, and give it basically enough petrol to take it out of Libyan waters, so it can be rescued by these rescue operations. But then the ship will suddenly stop, and the people are stranded at sea.”

Smugglers are also increasingly launching multiple boats at once, each potentially carrying hundreds of migrants. When the boats scatter and encounter trouble on the open waters, rescue vessels are left scrambling.

Mediterranean refugee and migrants deaths by migration route (2015-16)

A gruesome responsibility

Few people understand the grisly task of recovering dead bodies better than Jan Bikker, a forensics specialist with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Since May, Bikker has been in Athens, Greece — part of the Eastern Route that migrants take from Turkey — training organizations on how to recover and identify dead migrants.

Bikker has responded to seven shipwrecks since his arrival. “It’s always difficult because, well, normally half of the people who are involved are children, or at least young adults,” he says. And while Bikker is well prepared to respond to these catastrophes, he knows the toll it can take on coast guard crews. “Recovering babies is, of course, not part of their normal job,” he says. “Emotionally, I’m sure many of them will be affected.”

Asked whether he sees an end in sight to the crisis, Bikker offers a bleak assessment: “I don’t think there will be a stop to it.”

No end in sight?

According to Scott Watson, an associate professor of political science at the University of Victoria, this year’s Mediterranean death toll may actually be tied to increased patrolling. Watson points to a similar situation along the U.S.-Mexico border. “As enforcement picked up, they managed to reduce the number of crossings,” he says, “but it forced migrants into more dangerous routes, and so the numbers of fatalities have increased.”

Back in Europe, the number of migrant deaths is all the more concerning considering the number of persons attempting the crossing has fallen by just over 20 per cent. The drop is due in large part to the closing of the Balkan borders, as well as the agreement negotiated this March between the European Union and Turkey.

Like Bikker, Watson is unsure the crisis can be resolved. “The international community is clearly aware of what’s going on and the need to do something,” he says. Watson points to recent efforts to drum up support for increased refugee resettlement, but remains skeptical. “I’m not sure that the tools they have are ultimately going to resolve this, but at least that’s one of the options that’s been kicked around.”