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Evacuate Gaza Loved Ones from the Kill Zone! Canada Must Urgently Issue Visas to Save Families NOW!

Join us at the Ottawa offices of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for a peaceful vigil to demand that Canada immediately complete the processing of all remaining visa applications for the Gazan loved ones of Palestinians in Canada and implement an emergency action plan for their evacuation.
Since the Gaza Temporary Visa program was implemented in January 2024, Canada has assisted in the evacuation of fewer than 40 people out of 5,000 applicants. That’s only 0.7% of program applicants, an astounding number considering the daily risk of being blown to bits or suffering the slow death of starvation.
Right now, Canada is insisting no one can leave without biometrics (fingerprints and photographs). This violates Canada’s own very specific program guidelines: “Given the situation we understand that you won’t be able to give your biometrics or complete a full admissibility check until you’ve left Gaza. If your application passes a preliminary eligibility and admissibility assessment we’ll forward your name to the local authorities to facilitate your exit from Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.” (https://www.canada.ca/…/gaza-tr-measures/after.html… )
Canada already has photographs because all applicants sent copies of their passports. In addition, since Israeli apartheid occupation authorities have a registry of all Palestinians in Gaza, they would be the first to say no to the exit of anyone they felt posed some theoretical threat. But Canada is not even willing to take the word of its Israeli allies on this matter. Instead, it is assuming, based on anti-Palestinian racism, that all Palestinians are a threat until they prove otherwise. That includes starving children, grandmothers, school teachers, health care workers, farmers, gravely injured and ill program applicants.
The Canadian government’s assumption of guilt mirrors (indeed, goes far beyond) the Obama assassination-by-drone policy which, as reported in 2012, “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”
Canada can shed as many tears as it likes over the losses of hundreds of program applicants who would be here safe with their families were it not for wrongfully treating every Palestinian as a supposed threat. But that is no consolation for those traumatized for life by these immeasurable losses. It must take action.
The only Palestinians who have made it to Canada (861 as of July 1, 2025) made it out on their own by exhausting life savings to pay border bribes to escape before the closure and demolition of Rafah. In the same 540-day period under the Ukraine program, over 650,000 visas had been approved and 186,454 arrived in Canada. In the first year of the program, over 8,000 Israelis were granted visas to come to Canada.
Clearly, Canada has the capacity to process applications in the same time period it did for Ukrainians (average 14-day turnaround), and it also has the ability to facilitate evacuations. The fact that it has not done so is not a matter of organizational ability or staff resources. Rather it is rooted in systemic anti-Palestinian racism, and the ludicrous racial profiling presumption of guilt that every Palestinian in Gaza is a risk until proven otherwise.
In the meantime, far too many loved ones have been killed waiting for Canada, a shameful reflection of another bleak period in our history when Jews fleeing a genocide were turned away under a None is Too Many policy.
Please join us for this peaceful vigil (ie, no yelling or verbal abuse directed against our opponents) organized by the Gazan Canadians League–Ottawa and the Rural Refugee Rights Network.
More info at tasc@web.ca
Special thanks to Peter Stockdale for the fabulous photo!