Ottawa stops funding temporary accommodations for Afghan migrant applicants waiting in Pakistan

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has stopped subsidizing temporary accommodations in Pakistan for people applying through a special immigration program for Afghans who worked for the Canadian government or armed forces.

Special measures for Afghans trying to move to Canada were introduced by the federal government in summer 2021, after the Taliban swept to power and sent many former employees of western governments into hiding.

The federal government began covering the cost of accommodations for Afghans who crossed over into Pakistan while they waited for their applications to be processed.

"Providing temporary accommodations in Pakistan for people under the Afghan Resettlement Initiative was an exceptional temporary measure. Temporary accommodations were needed due to the time it took to process the large volume of applications, as well as operational challenges in Pakistan," IRCC told CBC News in a media statement.

The department also said it spent $21.8 million on applicants' accommodation in 2022-2023, and another $21 million in 2023-2024.

IRCC said that while it will keep paying shelter costs for Afghans who are already in the processing pipeline, it has told anyone who started an application after June 30 that they will not have access to subsidized accommodation unless they are "emergency and vulnerable cases." 

Zool Suleman, a Vancouver-based immigration lawyer, said the decision to end the shelter subsidy could leave some Afghan applicants with nowhere to turn.

"While I appreciate the government should be prudent in how they're spending their money, what we don't want is a situation where we made a promise as a country to an individual, or a family, who have provided services to the Canadian government, and then out of some kind of over-caution on the budgetary side they're depriving a family of housing and food," he said.

"I would urge the government to err on the side of caution in terms of not providing services, and obviously speed up the program."

When asked about the amount of money Ottawa has spent so far on sheltering Afghan applicants, Suleman said it's about doing right by people who made sacrifices for Canada.

"Canadians need to understand it's a large group of people who very much helped us when we needed it," he said.

One applicant who has been waiting in Islamabad since October 2021 to find out if he and his family will be accepted told CBC News the government's process has been inefficient.

"There was a better way of doing that," said Mohammad Younas Nasimi, a former CAF military contractor who worked with a bomb detection crew. "There are families that have received rejection from the IRCC [after years].

"How come, first of all, you took that long and kept them and spent that much money on them, and then let them go? You just left them ... nowhere."