Discontinued education

>> Denied student loans, many refugees never make it to university

by CRAIG SEGAL

For 10 years, Saada Abdi and her four kids, all Somali refugees, were living in a murky legal situation. The federal government gave them barely enough money to survive. Although they could work, Abdi and her eldest son could not improve their job prospects. They could not afford university tuition. And, as refugees, they were denied student loans.

In 1991, Abdi, her kids, and her teenage brother fled Somalia's bloody civil war, which had already killed her brother-in-law (her husband died before the war). After living in a refugee camp for three months, they bought two forged passports and visas for $4,000 (U.S.). Then they flew from Nairobi to Buffalo, New York, where they applied for Canadian refugee status.

Like the majority of refugee applicants, Abdi and her family had no identification. "When there is a civil war, you don't have time to apply for a passport," she says. In cases like hers, Immigration Canada forces refugees to wait for three years while they do a security check. Canada accepted them, and they moved to one of Toronto's roughest neighbourhoods. Abdi's brother got mixed up with local gangs and was deported. Abdi, 39, moved her family to Montreal in 1996.

Last week, Canada granted Abdi and her family permanent residence status. It took twice as long as it was supposed to. "We were in limbo," says Abdi, who is now director of the Committee to Aid Refugees on Beaubien. "I couldn't understand their reasoning. I didn't want to be on welfare. I was never on welfare in my home country.

"I never felt at home. I always felt like I was on standby."

Over 13,000 refugees live in uncertainty like Abdi, according to "The Getting Landed Project," a February 2000 report by the Maytree Foundation, a private Toronto-based anti-poverty and social-justice charity. Many cannot improve their job prospects because they can't afford higher education. The report says Canada is violating Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since higher education should be "equally available to all on the basis of merit."

"This effectively bars one of the neediest student populations from the opportunity to acquire skills and training," says another report published last year by Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ), a non-partisan citizen's group also based in Toronto which participated in "Getting Landed". Unlike Canada, the U.S. grants student loans to refugees.

The Maytree report says making loans available to refugees is affordable. The government loaned $1.6-billion to full-time students in nine provinces in 1999. The report says granting loans to refugees would increase that figure by only $4-million. It says refugees would most likely repay their student loans, as "the repayment rate of the existing Immigrant Loan Program is steady at 92 per cent."

According to the CPJ study, 8,381 refugees had been waiting for a year and a half or longer for permanent residence status. Of that figure, 3,000 were of university age.

Again according to the CPJ report, other consequences of not being landed include mental health problems, family conflicts, lack of self-esteem and inability to integrate.

Abdi says granting refugees student loans will only help Canadians. "We can contribute a lot to this economy, but we aren't allowed. If I'd had a loan, I could have created a business and hired people. I always dreamed of going back to university and I couldn't."