We investigate how refugee sponsors and sponsorship groups approach their responsibility to “create new Canadians.” We set the stage by reflecting on the history of Canada as an immigrant-receiving, multicultural country, as well as on the role of acculturation attitudes of host community members in establishing the integration environment for newcomers in general. We use findings from nearly 60 interviews with sponsors in the Ottawa area to outline the different approaches that sponsors take. Approaches to sponsorship fall into three general orientations: paternalistic, passive paternalistic and mutualistic. These approaches manifest in the actions that sponsors take during the sponsorship process. In our discussion, we consider the implications of these approaches for the sponsor–refugee relationship, as well as the broader project of Canadian multiculturalism. We argue that mutualistic approaches best demonstrate welcoming acculturation orientations to newcomers, and that they are an important component of supporting privately sponsored refugees to become Canadians.

The scope of this Article is to understand to what extent a recent and fruitful private initiative sponsoring a safe alternative legal pathway spread from Italy, called “humanitarian corridors,” may in the future become a general and uniform alternative model for all the European Union States. Such a practice—which currently represents an exceptional route for vulnerable migrants to enter the country without harm after a security screening and to be materially supported by the same sponsors in the crucial initial phase of integration—is at present restricted to a relatively small number of beneficiaries, but it could potentially be extended to other States.

In order to achieve this goal, it is argued that the present model should be slightly adjusted—especially with regard to the actual reference to Article 25 of the Visa Code as its legal basis. The latter seems difficult to be formally maintained after the much criticized 2017 judgment X and X v. Belgium, in which the Court of Justice of the European Union conferred to Member States a wide margin of discretion when requested to grant humanitarian visas by vulnerable people exposed to serious irreversible harm. Against this background, clear obligations to grant humanitarian visas to vulnerable people at risk already exist. This obligation stems from international law—both general and conventional—and constitutes the adequate legal basis both for States and civil society to act in a “multi-stakeholder alliance” to find solutions to the challenges and opportunities deriving from international migration, as indicated in the Global Compact for Migration.

In-migration embodies the liberal-democratic paradox: the tension between the right of an individual and the collective will of a polity. This is well illustrated by escalating conflicts over admission of the “special category” of international migrants: refugees. Taking Japan as a notoriously difficult case, this paper analyzes recent developments in Japan's embattled refugee policy and argues that grassroots efforts by civil society provide a way to move beyond the current gridlock of the state-centric paradigm of refugee admission. Specifically, empirical evidence available to date suggests that private refugee sponsorship that enables individuals and community organizations to voluntarily sponsor the resettlement of UN-recognized refugees offers a viable policy instrument in Japan's context. While retaining the democratic communitarian outlook on admission of foreigners, the model injects liberal universalist qualities into immigration policy that are capable of motivating positive change domestically and, potentially, across East Asia at large.