Tibetan Pemten Lama, owner of Himalaya Arts and Crafts on W. Broadway, immigrated to Canada from Nepal in 2005. Photo by Léo Newman

Pema Kyirong is ecstatic at the prospect of being reunited with her Tibetan family thanks to the Tibetan Resettlement Project, announced by the Government of Canada in 2010. The public policy will facilitate the immigration of 1,000 Tibetans residing in the north Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh (AP), where Kyirong was born and where her family still lives.

“I was very happy the day when I heard 1,000 Tibetan people from AP are getting visa[s] to [come] here,” says Kyirong.

Since coming to Canada more than 25 years ago, Kyirong has been supporting her family in AP as well as her own two children, both born here. According to Kyirong, life in AP is extremely tough, everyone is very poor and there are few opportunities available.

Pema Kyirong. Photo courtesy of Pema Kyirong

“I wanted a better life here, I can work, I can do something better here,” she says.

Even though approximately 8,000 Tibetans have fled to AP and lived there for decades, their situation remains complex since they cannot become Indian citizens and are not legally recognized as refugees. Rather, they are displaced people and indefinitely stateless. The resettlement project promises an opportunity for exiting this tenuous state of limbo and starting a new life in Canada.

The project comes with its own set of challenges to overcome, says Mati Bernabei, president of Canada Tibet Committee’s Vancouver chapter. While the government is providing 1,000 visas, they are not providing any financial support, which puts stress on the project.

“[The project needs] support now at the get go, just to get the people here, and then once they arrive, care, support and understanding as they go through this adjustment,” says Bernabei.

The policy requires that each immigrant have a community-based sponsor in Canada before coming here who can provide support for a maximum of one year.

Profoundly impacted by her experiences travelling through Tibet, India and Nepal after graduating university in the late 1980s, Bernabei has been involved with the Tibetan community in Vancouver ever since. While she isn’t Tibetan herself, she speaks of the community with overwhelming love and compassion and describes them as her “friends and family.”

Focusing on Tibetan diaspora education in India and Nepal in her dissertation, Bernabei has taken soon-to-be teachers to Tibetan boarding schools in Dharamshala. Many children from the settlements in AP are being educated here, as it is impossible to sustain a school in AP. This makes life hard for families who have to send their children away for schooling.

“[These children] see their parents once every three to five years because their parents are too poor to visit them and it’s too difficult to get back,” says Bernabei.

Bernabei views the new Tibetan Resettlement Project as a chance to reunite these families. While once hesitant about relocating Tibetan refugees so far from Tibet, she now recognizes this as an opportunity to move farther away so they can live closer together.

Pemten Lama is a Tibetan born in Nepal, who, like Tibetans in India, was never able to gain citizenship.

“We are born [in Nepal] but we will never be citizens of Nepal,” Lama says of his life there. “We are, as Tibetans, second-class citizens.”

After the situation worsened in Nepal, he immigrated to Canada in 2005 to be reunited with his family and start a new life in Vancouver. Now an owner of Himalaya Arts and Crafts on West Broadway, he enthusiastically describes the experience of being treated as a Canadian and the respect he is shown, even though he wasn’t born here.

“I feel close to Canada, and now I’m a citizen,” he says.

Lama, while sporting a Tibetan Resettlement Project hoodie, expresses his excitement about the new policy.

“It’s a great project and [the] people are very helpful,” he says.

Though the incoming Tibetan immigrants will undoubtedly have to work through the challenges of relocating to a radically different country, the Tibetan community is bursting with compassion and hard work to help them. Whether this stems from the constant mission of maintaining their Tibetan culture or some other inner drive, the social fabric of this small diaspora community is overwhelmingly strong, and they never stop smiling.

Above all, the Tibetan Resettlement Project represents an incredible opportunity for families such as Kyirong’s to be reunited after decades apart, for children like those studying in Dharmshala to grow up with their parents, and for all the immigrants to have the same chance as Lama – to build new lives as citizens of a prosperous country.

On February 23rd, a workshop and introduction to the Tibetan Resettlement Project will be held for those interested in helping with sponsorship, volunteering or simply wanting to learn more about the program.

***

More information at www.projecttibetsociety.ca