Tens of thousands of Ukrainians expected to come to Canada in next few months

Canadian settlement agencies are preparing for the arrival of tens of thousands of Ukrainians before the end-of-March deadline for those fleeing the Russian invasion to enter Canada on emergency visas, Report informs via CTV News.

The federal government has issued 936,293 temporary emergency visas since March 2022 for Ukrainians who want to work or study in Canada while they wait out the war.

A total of 210,178 people had actually made the journey to Canada as of Nov. 28.

As many as 90,000 more emergency visa holders are thinking of coming before the deadline, pre-arrival surveys by Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada and Operation Ukraine Safe Haven suggest.

Operation Ukraine Safe Haven was formed to centralize communications between governments and settlement agencies responding to Ukrainians who arrived in Canada after the war began.

That would mark a considerable increase in the number of Ukrainian newcomers compared to past months, said Sarosh Rizvi, the organization's executive director.

When Russia launched its violent invasion of Ukraine in 2022, millions of people escaped the country in search of safety. Canada took the extraordinary approach of opening its doors to an unlimited number of Ukrainians and their families with a new emergency visa program.

Compared to what's in place for people who arrive as typical refugees, there were fewer built-in supports to help the Ukrainian newcomers get on their feet. Instead, community members stepped up to donate clothes and furniture, businesses offered people jobs and some people even opened their homes.

Even with all that goodwill, people still struggled to find a place for their families to stay while they got on their feet.