It was a bittersweet moment when Hassan Alshikh Darwish was selected in Turkey as part of Canada’s massive Syrian refugee resettlement project almost two years ago.

His whole family — parents, elder brother, three sisters and their spouses and children — had always lived together in Damascus. Even after they all fled to Batman, a city in southeastern Turkey, in 2013, they still lived in the same building.

Now, for the first time, their family unit would be pulled apart.

Although his wife, two children and parents all arrived in Toronto with him in February 2016, the majority of the Darwish clan — 19 adults and children — are still languishing in Turkey, except for one sister and her family who were resettled to Brussels in November. Darwish’s brother and his wife and children have been waiting since November 2016 for their application to come to Canada to be approved.

“There was a lot of crying when we left Batman,” said Darwish, a skilled trades worker who came here as a resettled Syrian refugee sponsored by the Canadian government. “We felt we would never see them again.”

Life is tough for the estimated 800,000 Syrian refugees stranded in Turkey, where they can work only illegally, often in exploitative conditions, while facing repatriation to Syria at any time, Darwish said.

According to the Turkish Consul General to Canada, Erdeniz Sen, Turkey hosts more than 3.4 million Syrian refugees as of Jan. 4. and 230,000 of them stay in 21 camps. (See response from the Turkish Consul General, here.)

Since Justin Trudeau and the Liberals came to power in October 2015, Canada has opened its doors to almost 50,000 Syrian refugees through sponsorships by the federal government and private community groups.

As of early December, the Immigration Department said it was still processing applications for 20,000 sponsored Syrian refugees, including 15,927 from private sponsorship groups, 4,006 under government assistance, and the rest through joint sponsorships between the two.

The largest backlog is in Lebanon (7,700), followed by United Arab Emirates (3,200), Saudi Arabia and Turkey (both around 2,400), and Jordan (1,840).

“Processing times vary depending on where individuals are located. Refugee processing is complex due to work with some of the world’s most at-risk people in challenging local conditions,” said a department spokesperson, Nancy Caron.

“Some of these factors include establishing identity, addressing security concerns as well as logistical challenges that are outside of the department’s control.”

However, she said, the department is working toward eliminating the existing backlog of applications for privately sponsored refugees by the end of 2019 and reducing processing times for new applications submitted after 2019 to about 12 months.

Andrew FitzGerald of Canada4Refugees, a grassroots advocacy group for private sponsors, accused the Liberal government of missing its goal to process all the applications from before March 31, 2016, by early 2017, as many of these applications are still awaiting a decision.

“There is a lack of transparency from the Immigration Department regarding individual files or the overall program. This lack of transparency has only gotten worse,” FitzGerald said.

“The difficulty of obtaining any feedback regarding delays in individual applications makes it incredibly frustrating for private sponsorship groups when inordinate delays occur, as is often the case.”

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Jessica Miklos, who is a member of the group that sponsored the Darwish family, said the estimated processing time for Syrian sponsorship on the Immigration website has risen to at least 19 months now from 13 months in November 2016, when her team submitted an application to sponsor Darwish’s brother Ibrahim, his wife and their four children. Darwish’s remaining siblings are still looking for sponsors.

“This family is now part of our family. And families help each other, so we raised the money to bring another part of their family,” Miklos said. “And now, again, we wait. We see that our government, which cleared thousands of families to come to Canada in just a few months, is now taking 19 months or more to review their paperwork.”

Meanwhile, 33-year-old Darwish and his parents have found jobs working in restaurant kitchens. They are also taking English classes.

“We try to work hard and give back, but it is hard to focus when the rest of our family are not here. My mother is weeping all the time, worrying about her other children and grandchildren. It just makes it so difficult for us to feel fully settled here,” Darwish said through an interpreter. His brother got a call just before Christmas for an interview scheduled in January with Canadian officials at the local visa post.

It’s been almost two years since 8-year-old Lara Kevorkian Scherzer and Lord Lansdowne and da Vinci public schools raised $40,000 to sponsor a Syrian family to Canada from Lebanon’s Bekka Valley at the end of 2015. Today, they are still waiting for the family to come.

The students’ parents secured an apartment and furnished it in early 2016. To hold the unit, they rented it out through Airbnb until last month, when they decided to rent it to a longer-term tenant with the permission of their sponsored family.

“Lara has sent four years’ worth of her own Christmas and birthday money to a refugee camp in Lebanon. She has sold her toys and clothing to further fundraise for the family. She is upset about the delay,” said her mother, Noura Kevorkian, a film producer, who has made two short videos about the family stuck in limbo in the Middle East.

“As a parent, I’m fortunate that my kids were born in Canada. The delay is disheartening to the kids in the school. They wonder why the prime minister is not writing back and adults do not care what they do.”

Miklos said the Liberal government can do better, especially when so much money that has already been raised by community groups for the purpose of resettling the Syrians is still idling in bank accounts.

“Please fund the process at the levels needed to reunite families quickly. Don’t leave families to languish for years with temporary safety, but no real home,” Miklos said.

“We, Canadians, have raised large sums of money to support refugee families. Do the work of reviewing those files so that we can get that money back into the economy. When it comes down to it, we all share a common humanity. We are all just people who want to feel safe, and free to pursue a peaceful life.”