By IPS Correspondents
OTTAWA, Jan 5 2005 (IPS)

The Canadian government is offering to allow relatives here to adopt tsunami orphans and bring them to Canada under a programme to fast-track immigration from the disaster areas.

Immigration Minister Judy Sgro has urged Canadian-based families of children whose parents were killed in the disaster to contact the government so that discussions can begin. Sgro acknowledged the governments of the countries involved in the disaster must agree to the plan.

Thousands of Sri Lankan Canadians are members of the country’s Tamil minority who were allowed into Canada as political refugees. Canada’s Indonesian minority is quite small and is also made up mainly of political refugees. While the country has a sizeable Indian community, most discussions so far have been with the Sri Lankan government.

"The challenge is that the governments in Sri Lanka and India don’t want to lose their children. Their children are also the future for their country. It’s a very complex issue," Sgro said.

Prominent humanitarian groups like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have warned against well-intentioned but potentially traumatic adoptions of children still struggling with the horror of losing their families.

"Wherever possible, children should be placed within their own communities because that’s where people know them best, that’s where they have their friends, they have extended family members who can look after them," Shima Islam, a UNICEF spokesperson, told Agence France Presse.

The tsunami disaster has left as many as one in five Sri Lankan Canadians with relatives killed or missing. The Sri Lankan government has reportedly expressed openness to relocating children to communities abroad.

"There are a lot of orphaned children that have extended family here in Canada," Sgro said following a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, cabinet ministers and members of the South Asian community in Toronto on Monday.

"We’ll be very cautiously talking with the leaders of the community and discussing how we can match up extended family here with orphaned children over there, without question. We want to be as sympathetic as we can and as helpful as we can."

Previously, the government said it would fast-track immigration applications from people who can prove they have been substantially affected by the disaster. Immigration officials believe about 5,000 people will enter Canada under the new rules.

Immigration and landing fees will be waived for tsunami victims, the government announced this week. In addition, some 200 family reunification applications filed before the Dec. 26 disaster have been fast-tracked through the system, officials said.

UNICEF estimates that at least 50,000 children across the tsunami zone were orphaned by the disaster, but because of a lack of communications in the region, it may take weeks or months to determine if individual children were left without parents.

"There are people who would love to sponsor them or otherwise bring them. We are very concerned about the children," said Ganesan Segumar of the Canada-Sri Lanka Business Council.

"Right now, as distant relatives, you can’t bring them (under Canada’s immigration rules). So we are putting in a humble request to the government to look into it."

Lankathas Pathehmanathan, the editor of a community newspaper who met with Martin at a school in the Toronto suburb of Markham, told reporters that about one in five Sri Lankan Canadian families have lost close relatives in the disaster. Most of the students in the school are from families who have immigrated from Sri Lanka and India.

Sgro cautioned that because of the breakdown in communications systems and other infrastructure in many affected areas, it would be a challenge to locate the people that are to be sponsored.

"People have to realise that they’re not sitting on the other end of a telephone waiting for a phone call," she said.

Visa offices in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Bangkok, Thailand; New Delhi, India; and Jakarta, Indonesia, will give priority consideration to applications made by those "who have been directly and significantly affected by the disaster and who have immediate family members in Canada," a spokesman for the immigration minister said.

Excerpt: