HALIFAX—Tired of waiting for the arrival of a privately-sponsored Syrian family, a Halifax woman decided to travel to Jordan to meet them herself.
Stephanie Gillis says it’s been more than a year since the family of four was expected to arrive in Halifax, but a backlog of applications has left their arrival date unknown.
Gillis and her employer, Southwest Properties, created an internal group to help with the refugee crisis by privately sponsoring a Syrian family.
They were matched in December 2015 with a young family made up of a father with an agricultural engineering degree, a mother and two young children.
She says the family said they were contacted last February by the Canadian Embassy in Jordan, where the family had fled during the war and told to be ready to travel within two to three weeks.
The group had everything ready to go for the family’s arrival, including setting up their apartment, but the application is still waiting to be finalized.
So, Gillis decided to travel to Jordan at the beginning of this year to meet them.
“The frustrating part is the rushed feeling of being told they’re coming, getting the apartment ready and then waiting and not knowing,” she told Global News. “If we knew at that time that it was going to be a year or two delay, then you’d plan for that.”
Global News
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