More than 130 students in the Gaza Strip are facing long delays for study permits after being accepted into Canadian universities, according to the non-profit Palestinian Students & Scholars at Risk.
On Tuesday, PSSAR held a news conference in Ottawa with representatives from Oxfam Canada and the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, alongside NDP MP Heather McPherson and Liberal MP Salma Zahid.
They called for the federal government to “act with transparency, fairness and urgency to process student visas for Palestinian students.”
Aaron Shafer, an associate professor of forensic sciences at Trent University, said that he’s supervising a “top scholar” from Gaza City who has waited for more than a year for an update from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Other students have waited two years or more, he said.
Critics say the delays amount to a lack of political will, and that Canada is discriminating against Palestinian students who have already endured unimaginable hardships, especially during Israel's two-year assault on the Gaza Strip, a military campaign widely condemned as genocidal.
The IRCC has stated that Canada “is committed to a fair and non-discriminatory application of immigration procedures.”
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