Syrian boy in Saskatoon separated from parents for 5 years faces more reunion delays

Nine-year-old Adnan Kharsa loves his new life in Saskatoon, but the Syrian refugee yearns for the day he will be reunited with his parents. He has not seen them in person in five years.

"I would keep hugging them," he said. "I miss them lots."

The Grade 4 student lives with his grandmother and uncle in Canada, while his parents are stuck in Turkey with his three-year-old sister, Sham, who he's only seen on video chat.

The family's separation exemplifies the harsh reality of fleeing a war-torn country and navigating an immigration and refugee system bogged down by a large volume of applications and processing delays.

The federal department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) reported a backlog of 1.8 million immigration applications, including 158,778 refugee applications, as of Feb. 1. It hasn't accepted any private sponsorship applications — where Canadian organizations or groups provide support and basic living expenses to resettle refugees — so far this year.

In contrast, Ottawa created an emergency immigration program for Ukrainians affected by war that treats them differently from refugees and allows them to arrive in Canada within a matter of weeks of their application.

"We've not even been permitted to put in any [private sponsorship] applications in the first four months of this year," said Mark Bigland-Pritchard, a resettlement co-ordinator with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a faith-based agency involved in relief and development efforts.  "It's frustrating."

MCC has an agreement with the Canadian government to privately sponsor about 500 refugees a year. It expects to resume applications next month since the IRCC has said it will allow at least 25 applications per sponsorship agreement holder in early May.

Even then, the average processing time is three years after an application is submitted, Bigland-Pritchard said.

Adnan last lived with his parents — Mohammed Manhal Kharsa and Yasmine Sheikho — in the coastal city of Jableh, Syria, in 2017.

He has few memories of that time, although he vaguely remembers his dad chatting with some soldiers and then hoisting him up on a tank.

By the end of 2017, more than 13 million Syrians had been forced to flee or displaced internally by the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, with children among those bearing the brunt of the violence, according to UNICEF.  

The sound of bombing scared then four-year-old Adnan so much that his parents sent him on a trip to Malaysia with his grandmother, who planned to see two of her other children and seek medical treatment, said his aunt, Doha Kharsa, who is spearheading efforts to bring his parents into Canada.

A few days after they left on the trip, Adnan's parents fled to Turkey — without passports or much money — to avoid being recruited by the army, said Kharsa.