What is sponsorship?   Starting a new life!

1. Churches in the Diocese of Huron are able to sponsor refugees from overseas under the terms of the master agreement between the Diocese of Huron and the Government of Canada.
2. Our Diocese participates in the program in response to the gospels’ call to "welcome the stranger" and in response to the serious need to find solutions for the world's refugees.
3. Refugees who are privately sponsored are additional to those who are sponsored by the government.
4. Sponsorship is a commitment to working alongside the refugee in order to ensure that the person (or family) has the necessary support to integrate into life in Canada.
5. A constituent group is a group authorized under the Sponsorship Agreement to sponsor refugees. This might be one parish, or a group of parishes who have agreed to work together on a sponsorship.   We refer to the constituent group as the sponsors.
6. The Diocese assumes overall responsibility for the management of sponsorships under its agreement.

Types of Sponsorship

Private

Private Named

1. The sponsor names a specific refugee in need of resettlement.
2. This may be someone known through overseas contacts, someone who has contacted the diocese in writing or someone known through friends or relatives in Canada.
3. The overseas processing for these refugees usually takes two to four years.

   Private Unnamed

4. The group sponsors an individual or family already identified by Citizenship and Immigration as in need of protection.
5. Sponsors can specify certain criteria (e.g. we can support a family of four).
6. Citizenship and Immigration matches your group's offer of a sponsorship to a refugee family in need.
7. Since the overseas processing is complete, refugees usually arrive within one to six months.

   Family Linked

8. This is really a type of private named sponsorship
9. The refugee has friends or family in Canada who will provide all the basic needs for the refugee for the first year.
10. The sponsoring group helps with the paperwork and agrees to oversee the sponsorship.

    Responsibilities for private sponsorships.
    The sponsors or the relatives here are responsible for one year for:

11. Meeting the refugee at the airport.
12. Financially meeting the refugee's basic needs of clothing, lodging and incidentals.
13. The sponsors are not responsible for the costs of health care or English language education (ESL).
14. Providing orientation and emotional support and helping with job search.
15. The goal for the sponsoring group is to help the refugee become independent by the time the one year is ended.

    Joint Assisted Sponsorships (JAS)

16. The government provides the refugee with financial support for two years,
17. The sponsoring group provides settlement assistance, orientation, and emotional support.
18. This category has been set up specifically to allow for the sponsorship of refugees who have greater needs and may take longer to integrate into Canada successfully.
19. This category could include refugees with physical handicaps, large or single parent families, badly traumatized refugees.

Who can not be Sponsored?

• Refugee claimants (people who are already in Canada).
• People who applied previously and were refused, unless their circumstances have changed.
• People who have been accepted as refugees in another country or allowed to live permanently in the country to which they have fled.
• People who have fled to a “safe third country.”  This is a controversial topic but it includes, Europe, the U.S. and Australia.
• People who may have fled war or persecution some time ago but may now return safely.