“We are completely opposed to caps on the generosity of Canadians through the private sponsorship program,” said Canadian Council for Refugees executive director Janet Dench.

Over the last 30 years it was private sponsors, mostly churches, who actually decided which refugees they wanted to sponsor. Dench believes the government is trying to take control of which refugees make it to Canada away from the sponsors.

“There’s a sort of priority being given to refugees whom the government decides are their priority,” she said. “Refugees from Africa are being put to the back of the queue.”

Citizenship and Immigration Canada claims it is not telling Canadians who they can sponsor — but it is hinting.

“Private sponsors determine who they wish to sponsor,” said a CIC spokesperson. “The cap however, will set parameters on where they may sponsor from and indirectly this will encourage sponsors to focus on areas where there are not already long wait times.”

In practice this means if a parish wants to sponsor Iraqi refugees it will see the refugee within months. Parishes that sponsor Africans will wait years. Though the visa post in Nairobi, Kenya, has had its target for privately sponsored refugees increased 25 per cent since 2005, it’s still only allowed to clear 1,000 refugees per year for a region.

“The average processing time has increased to three or four years,” said Martin Mark, executive director of the Office for Refugees, Archdiocese of Toronto. “However in sub-Saharan Africa the waiting time can exceed five or six years. It’s devastating. We are literally losing refugees in the process who pass away.”

Slowing down the applications isn’t really solving the backlog problem, claims NDP Immigration critic Don Davies.

“You don’t address the underlying issue. The demand is still there. You’re just artificially pretending it’s not by not having the piece of paper on your desk,” he said.

Given a 24-per-cent drop in the total number of refugees Canada accepts since the Conservatives formed their first government in 2006, Davies believes there’s room to seriously ramp up the number of privately sponsored refugees brought to Canada. By imposing visas on Hungary and Mexico, the government has dramatically shrunk the number of inland refugee claims it must process, leaving more room for privately sponsored refugees who are certified as genuine refugees by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and are among the most vulnerable in the world.

Davies is frustrated the government has been unwilling to discuss other solutions to the backlog.

“It’s wrong in concept and it’s wrong in execution,” he said. “You’re taking authority away from the community and placing it in the hands of cold bureaucrats who are looking at people as numbers on a page.”

Mary Jo Leddy believes privately sponsored refugees ought to be the government’s first choice.

“The sponsorship process, it’s mostly church groups that have been sponsoring people, that is the absolute best way for people to come,” said Leddy, co-founder of Toronto’s Romero House, which welcomes refugees.

“They’ve already been selected overseas. They come and they’re welcomed into a community... It’s very face-to-face. It costs nothing for the government, really, nothing.”

Private sponsorships have grown dramatically since 2000, from less than 3,000 to a projected 6,500 per year in 2013.