Canada’s Immigration department had accumulated a backlog of nearly 7,500 applications from Syrian refugees by the time three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach at the beginning of September, the Citizen has learned.
Of those stuck in limbo, nearly 2,000 had been identified by the United Nations as being amongst the most vulnerable — and whose applications had been put on hold for at least several weeks by the Prime Minister’s Office in the spring.