CSS supporting recently arrived refugees at their Edmonton Reception House (supplied/Catholic Social Services)

By Jordan Davidson (Twitter: @JordanDHeyNow)

20,000 coming to Canada in 2 years

Catholic Social Services ready to welcome Afghan refugees to Red Deer

Sep 29, 2021 | 10:43 AM

When the Taliban took control over Afghanistan in August of this year, the Canadian government announced they would be accepting more than 20,000 Afghan refugees over the next two years.

These include journalists, interpreters, human rights activists and public servants, many of whom worked alongside Canadian officials in Afghanistan.

According to the federal government, Canada was able to evacuate about 3,700 Afghan refugees, with more than 3,000 evacuees now in Canada. Officials say as of Sept. 3, there are 470 Canadian citizens still in Afghanistan, as well as close to 260 permanent residents and 500 family members.

Officials add, however, it’s hard to say an exact number or where they all are currently, as the situation changes almost by the hour.

Those who were able to make it to Canada though, spent two weeks quarantining at a Toronto hotel before being re-settled across the country.

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That’s when resettlement agencies, such as Catholic Social Services (CSS) of Edmonton and Red Deer, were called in to help the government-assisted refugees feel at home in their new communities.

Director of Immigration and Settlement Services with CSS Red Deer, Sharon Yeo, says their job is to greet them at the airport and provide them with a temporary place to stay while also introducing them to their new community.

“Ensuring they have all their paper work and documentation, which could include social insurance numbers, Alberta Health Care cards, connecting the children to schools, connecting the adults to English language classes if they require it, ensuring they’re connected to the local health care system, their local community, whether that’s faith or cultural community,” she explains.

Yeo says they are ready to help any government-assisted refugee into the community, saying they already have interpreters on-site who speak Dari and Pashto, the two official languages of Afghanistan.

A CSS employee helping a recently arrived refugee from their Edmonton Reception House. (supplied/Catholic Social Services)

Yeo says they’ve also adapted to a virtual format for certain aspects of their job, for issues such as providing assistance to a refugee who has yet to do the mandatory 14-day quarantine upon entering Canada.

“We have to be super careful about all of that, so we’ve been adapting our services to some virtual services delivered in this time period, and we’ve enhanced our capacity to do that over the last 18 months.”

Yeo points out that the resettling process is not linear, and can take some refugees longer than others to settle in and no longer need assistance. Barriers like language, skill sets, and education are often determining factors.

“Many of our clients do many things all at the same time in parallel. Some are taking part-time language classes and at the same time they are also working a job during the day or in the evening. Settlement is an on-going process and there are many peaks and valleys in that process.”

She says settling into a new community, and country, can be a difficult journey, which is why their agency is there to walk beside them every step of the way.

Yeo says they do expect Afghan refugees to arrive in Red Deer at some point, but it’s hard to say exactly when.

She says there are plenty of ways the community can help support these new arrivals, along with refugees from other parts of the world that the CSS helps every single day.

For more information, you can go to cssalberta.ca.