Petition to reunite Brockville refugee with her family reaches 10,000 signatures

BROCKVILLE -

A woman who arrived in Brockville in 2019 as a refugee, leaving her young daughter and husband back in Uganda, has been waiting more than two years for her family to follow suit.

Nasro Mohamed looks at pictures of her now two-year-old daughter Afnaan on her phone, watching her grow up before her eyes, half a world away.

"She’s going to grow up, and sometimes when I talk on FaceTime she asks me 'Mom, where are you?'" Mohamed told CTV News.

Mohamed arrived in Canada in October 2019, leaving her home country of Somalia due to civil unrest.

The Brockville Freedom Connection sponsorship group and Brockville's First Presbyterian Church helped to bring her over, thinking her family would follow her shorty after.

"We discovered when she got here, the night that she got here, that she had had to leave a husband and a small baby behind," said BFC chair Nancy Cassie.

"It's really, really tough. There's some depression, and it's hard when you have a child that's in the formative years and it's a little girl and she needs to be with her mom," Cassie said.

Nasro Mohamed shows pictures of her daughter to Marianne Emig Carr (left) and Nancy Cassie. (Nate Vandermeer/CTV News Ottawa)

Cassie says the process to bring her family here slowed to a halt last February, and they haven't heard much from the federal government since.

"They are citing COVID as the reasoning for that, but we've seen other cases coming through and resettling other families," Cassie said.

Mohamed, meanwhile, has quickly adapted to small town life in Brockville, learning English and obtaining a full-time job at a thrift store downtown.

"She loves her job. The ladies that she works with have been fantastic," Cassie added. "They've approached us to see how they can help as well to have her family come over."

"She supporting herself here and she's actually supporting her family back home," she said.

Mohamed talks with her family over the phone a couple times a week.

"It's been two years since I saw my daughter and my husband," Mohamed said. "I really miss them."

Marianne Emig Carr, minister at Brockville’s First Presbyterian Church, says they have not received answers from the Canadian government as to why the process is taking so long.

"We're frustrated right now because one of the stated goals of the Canadian government, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, is to reunite families," Emig Carr said.

"We've written to our MP, we've written through the national church office, the sponsorship agreement holder. Nothing. It's just been dead silence," she added.

The group has started an online petition, working with the Rural Refugee Network, to raise awareness about the situation.

"They've been successful in reuniting 10 out of the 14 families that they were working with and we saw some of their good news and asked what do we do to find the same success,” Cassie said.

"We're looking for as many signatures as we can get," she added. "That's going to be forwarded with the submission that we put in. We are applying for a temporary resident permit to have Nasro's family come here to await the other process they are going through while they are here."

The petition currently has over 10,700 signatures.

"Two years to be apart is just too long," added Emig Carr. "But she's got lots of courage and she's already been through so much in her life, fleeing her home country, which was very dangerous. I don't think people appreciate what she's been through, and how strong she is."

Mohamed is still holding out hope that she'll be reunited with her family soon.

"She's going to be three years next year so I really excited to see my daughter to care for her and my husband," Mohamed said. "He will be my side too, and to be a big family, be together."

Liiban and Afnaan.

CTV News reached out to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

"Mr. (Liiban) Khadiye’s application for permanent residence was received on January 31, 2020. Mr. Khadiye’s child was included on the application as an accompanying dependent," said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in a statement on Friday.

"Processing times for this category of application of permanent residence, those applying from Uganda, are 34 months. As such, the application is within published timelines."

Emig Carr says MP Michael Barrett’s office did reach out to her on Tuesday for an update, but that no further progress has been made on the file.

"We want to get them here. We want Afnaan to get started with school, to grow up here and be with both her mother and her father as they start a new life here," Emig Carr said.

"She's been such a wonderful addition to our community as has so many of the other newcomers that have arrived in Brockville. We're thankful that they came here," she added.

A link to the online petition can be found here.