Egyptian refugees in Montreal hoping to reunite with father after 5 years, frustrated by delays

Ten-year-old Sandy Mahmoud spent countless weekends at the Montreal airport watching flights from Egypt land on the tarmac.

She hasn’t seen her father in five years and was always hoping he would be on one of those flights.

He never was.

“The airport is beside me,” explained Sandy’s mother Gawaher Abdelghany. “She went there and wait. She looking at the airplane coming from Egypt. She would wait one hour and then come back here.”

Gawaher came to Canada with her daughter and son in 2019 as asylum seekers. They were accepted as refugees two years ago.

But continuous delays in getting permanent residency or a travel document to go see the kids’ father has affected the family’s mental health and well-being.

“Of course, I feel stressed and sad, and I hope I can help her meet her father. But I can’t do that,” Gawaher said.

They are asking Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for answers.

“Please just give me answer: why this long time? Why?”

The family applied for a visitor visa for Osama Ibrahim Shahin Mahmoud to come to Canada. He’s been refused twice.

The last option was to apply for Canadian travel documents in April 2022 so the family could travel and see him. A travel document is a passport issued for refugees who don’t have permanent residency and cannot use their original Egyptian passports because they could have problems returning to Egypt with it.

“When I applied to travel documents two years ago, I called Immigration to ask them,” Gawaher said. “They said ‘you have a problem in your paper.’ I said ‘OK no problem, I don’t need my travel document, just for my kids please.’”

“After 10 days I was surprised, I received a paper to get my travel document from Post Canada. I supposed that for my kids. When I went there, it was me. So when for my kids?

“Around one month ago, I received it for my son, but not for Sandy, nothing. ‘You have to be patient, you have to wait.’”

OMNI News reached out to IRCC to ask about the reason for the delay. They say a consent form for a minor child is missing – the PPTC 028 document – and indicated the father would have to sign one.

But the family insists the form was completed by Mahmoud in person in February at the Canadian embassy in Cairo.

IRCC says that form was “determined to be incomplete, and the processing office requested a completed and signed PPTC 028 form on May 1, 2024.”

The family went through the process to complete the form, with Osama Mahmoud returning to the Canadian embassy in Cairo. The IRCC confirmed the document was received on June 17.

“It will be reviewed and the family will be informed about next steps,” the IRCC told OMNI News.

The family has yet to hear back.

“Why it would it take 20 days for someone to have their travel document while it’s taking us two years?” wondered Gawaher. “Why someone apply for PR and receive it in six months and for us two years and still waiting? Everyone should be treated the same.

“I am so scared that something bad will happen and my daughter won’t be able to meet her father again.”

Sandy’s dream of reuniting with her father – and the sadness it’s causing – is illustrated in her drawings and letters.

“I was crying every day to at least see him for the last time, to at least talk with him in a real place where I can at least show him the house, the school that I go to,” Sandy said.

“I just want them to tell me what is that year that I’m gonna see him.”