What Canada can learn from Germany’s refugee resettlement

“What’s going on? I just don’t recognize this country any more,” Olaf Kleist is recalling his reaction upon seeing thousands of Germans greeting Syrian refugees at train stations in September and then volunteering en masse to help them out in the following weeks.

Kleist, who has taught at the Free University and at Humboldt University both in Berlin, is now doing a research fellowship in refugee resettlement at Oxford University in England.

Germany is the main destination for thousands of refugees who have shown up in Western Europe since the summer. The German government estimates it will have to settle 800,000 of them by the end of 2015 — mostly from Syria and some from Afghanistan and Iraq.

“It is a struggle for local communities in Germany. They have to house and provide for refugees,” Kleist told Yahoo News Canada. “We have lots of volunteers doing the main work, which is the problem.”

Indeed some of Germany’s challenges could have echoes in Canada ever since the new government of Justin Trudeau confirmed last week it would make good on a promise to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of the year.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, Trudeau reiterated his intention over the weekend at the G20 summit in Turkey, declaring that the task of integrating newcomers would be founded on defining “a country not on national identity or ethnicity or language or background, but on values.”

But the resettlement issue has been complicated after it was reported that one of the Paris attackers may have entered Europe as a Syrian refugee in Greece. So there is considerable concern over the UN’s ability to pre-screen refugees, which former immigration minister Jason Kenney has described as cursory at best. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told CTV’s Question Period his department was working with the RCMP, CSIS and international agencies to make sure the screening process was as thorough, competent and effective as possible.

Challenging logistics

Little has been divulged by the Liberal government on a specific plan of action to bring those refugees to Canada and to resettle them.

Kleist, who also founded the Refugee Research Network, wonders how Trudeau’s government will be able to process the refugees (interviews, medical checkups, security checks), bring them to Canada and then start the process of settlement.

“We had a similar program instituted in Germany in 2013 to bring 5,000 one year, then another 5,000 and then 10,000,” he says.

“Bringing them to Germany took much longer…It is difficult to do quickly.”

Canadian officials have revealed they are working with different agencies in order to fast-track refugees, i.e., the International Organization for Migration and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, in addition to sending more agents to the field (Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan) to help with the selection process.

Indications are they will first be flown to one of three locales:  Montreal, Toronto and the Trenton, Ont. military base. This is where, Kleist and others have warned, things get sticky.

“There is a humanitarian challenge of housing so many people,” said Kleist when pondering what is happening in Germany. Some towns have resorted to setting up military-style encampments in fields or parks while other smaller towns feel overwhelmed by refugees being bussed to their district with little federal help.

In Berlin, the former Nazi airport, Tempelhof, is now being used for refugees. More than 2,000 refugees are now housed in three of seven empty hangars. A total of 8,000 are expected to be sheltered there by the end of the year.

Kleist says there’s a disconnect in terms of pronouncements by Angela Merkel’s government and what is actually happening on the ground.

Housing headache

Gloria Nafziger, a refugee and migrant support co-ordinator with Amnesty International Canada, agrees with Kleist.

“Housing is a big concern. It’s an issue for a lot of Canadians as well  — affordable housing,” she told Yahoo News Canada.

“We have a big advantage over Germany in that we control when the refugees show up and where. They had to contend with hundreds of thousands showing up at their doorstep within months.”

Despite that difference, Nafziger still has worries about having to settle such a large number of refugees in such a short time.

“There is talk here of using military bases which we did with the refugees from Kosovo,” she said.  In 1999, Canada participated in an emergency resettlement of Albanian Kosovars, accepting more than 5,000 in one go.

“During the last government, most settlement agencies had major cuts. We also had host programs that have disappeared where Canadians could ‘friend’ a refugee and provide support that way.”

Kleist warns of a reliance on volunteers. In Berlin, Christiane Beckmann, spokeswoman for the refugee organization Moabit Hilft!, complained to journalists back in October that volunteers were burning out because they were “doing the job of the state” with their own time and money.

While it’s hard to predict whether this will bear out in Canada, it could become another concern as many community groups and individual churches/synagogues/mosques have raised funds to privately sponsor Syrian families — which will take some load off the federal government.

Immigration Minister John McCallum said last week the government will be reinstating full healthcare for refugees after the Harper government made major cuts to that program. It means they will get immediate care rather than have to go to emergency rooms, which costs more.

Dr. Philip Berger of the Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care said he hopes the reinstatement will extend to the privately-sponsored refugees as well as refugees who — as it stands — do not yet get coverage “for medication, vision…dental care [or] prosthesis for amputated limbs.”

It is the post-arrival challenges that are great: housing, healthcare and language learning where waiting lists are up to 10-months long in some cities, according to the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance.

Kleist says in Germany, institutions have “outsourced” their responsibilities as volunteers have taken over the tasks of helping refugees find apartments, sometimes welcoming refugees to live with them, bringing them to doctor appointments or providing German lessons.

“The problems we face [in Germany] are all local,” says Kleist. “In addition to food and medical care, the refugees have to become new members of society.”

Kleist says more emphasis should be on local programs at all levels.

Both Kleist and Nafziger, though, have a can-do attitude.

“We are up to it,” Nafziger said. “We have organizations across Canada that have done this for decades.”

In Europe, Kleist points to the past.

“It’s not like this is the first time it happened. After the Second World War, we had 12 million refugees arrive within a few years in Germany,” explains Kleist.

“It is borne out of necessity…It’s just a question of doing it.”