Thread: YWCA launches new program: Mothers Without Legal Status

YWCA launches new program: Mothers Without Legal Status
Have few rights when relationships fail
Lena Sin, The Province
Published: Sunday, October 05, 2008
They come from all over the world to start a new life with a new husband.

But when the promise of marital bliss turns out to be a marital trap, the fallout for these foreign brides can be devastating.

The YWCA in Vancouver says more and more immigrant women fleeing abusive relationships are showing up at their women's shelter.



Font:****But as newcomers sponsored by their Canadian husbands, the very act of leaving their partners usually means the breakdown of their sponsorship as well.

The women are left in limbo, unable legally to work or collect welfare, but also unable to leave the country because of custody issues involving their children.

"These women have no legal status in Canada so they're not eligible for income assistance, they're not eligible for medical care, they're not eligible to work. Literally, there is no way to put a roof over their head or food in their mouths legally other than pure charity," says Andrea Vollans, legal educator for the YWCA in Vancouver.

The problem has become so apparent in Vancouver that the YWCA is now launching a new research project, titled "Mothers Without Legal Status." The 15-month project is believed to be the first of its kind in Canada and is aimed at examining the extent to which the problem exists and gaps in immigration and family law.

Vollans says she started to notice the trend about two years ago, when desperate immigrant mothers and their children started to show up the YWCA's Munroe House in Vancouver.

"Every situation is unique and every one is catastrophic," she says.

That the women leave the relationship at all is astonishing considering the threat of deportation looms large.

"It's used as a form of control," Vollans says.

The women are not necessarily "mail-order brides," but have met their Canadian husbands through a myriad of ways: Internet dating sites, arranged marriages, or by meeting overseas or locally if the women were here on student visas, for example.

And the nations from which they hail are just as diverse: Taiwan, Thailand, Russia and the Middle East.

Vollans hopes the research project will ultimately provide recommendations for how to help these mothers.

The project is being launched in conjunction with a Week Without Violence (Oct. 12 to 1, a national violence prevention initiative.

lsin@theprovince.com


http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/ ... fcd1d6348c

© The Vancouver

Very simple to solve. Give them a one way ticket home.

Just another form of welfare.