Emergency Fund

Although the MJC is a non-profit organization offering free or accessible services, users often face major economic barriers to covering the costs associated with certain essential procedures to regularize their immigration situation and to meet their needs.

 

Here are some examples:

 

• Application for permanent residence. An adult must pay a processing fee of $635 and a child, $175, to submit an application for permanent residence for humanitarian reasons, to which is added a biometrics fee of $80 per person and $170 per family. For example, a single parent with two dependent children must pay a fee of $1,155 simply to be allowed to submit the application.

 

• Work permits. The processing fee for work permit applications is $155. Unfortunately, a malfunction of the IRCC website requires paying an additional $100 (additional fee for open work permits) even if asylum seekers, even those rejected, are exempt from said fees (it is possible, later, to request a refund). Finally, it is required to redo biometrics even when it was recently done as part of an application for permanent residence. Thus, the actual fee to pay to submit a work permit application is $335.

 

• Psychological and/or psychosocial assessments. When the CJM team represents a person at risk of being removed from Canada, it is often necessary to obtain emergency psychological and psychosocial assessments. These costs are covered by legal aid, but sometimes CJM users are not eligible for legal aid and it then becomes necessary to pay the experts' fees.

 

• Return to the country. Finally, when people are removed from Canada and then granted permanent residence, they must reimburse the removal costs (usually $1,500 per person), and an authorization to return to Canada at a cost of $400 per person must also be requested.

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Donations collected for the CJM Emergency Fund will be dedicated exclusively to providing direct financial support for these types of expenses. Only people who meet fairly strict eligibility criteria will be able to receive the funds: isolation, lack of support network, inability to obtain the funds otherwise, urgency to make the expense to safeguard human rights.