SYR Refugees to Canada (split fm SYR refugees thread)

[Lightguns]

Aug 25, 2016

Ontario puts another $1.55M to refugee settlement, support
http://www.680news.com/2016/08/25/ontario-puts-another-1-55m-to-refugee-settlement-support/
Ontario is putting another $1.55 million toward refugee supports, including settlement services, mental health care and programming for students.

Well, it's a good thing they raised license plate sticker prices, wouldn't want to go in the hole!

 

[Bass ackwards]

Aug 25, 2016

Ontario puts another $1.55M to refugee settlement, support
http://www.680news.com/2016/08/25/ontario-puts-another-1-55m-to-refugee-settlement-support/
Ontario is putting another $1.55 million toward refugee supports, including settlement services, mental health care and programming for students.

I wonder exactly what they mean by programming...

 

[mariomike]

I wonder exactly what they mean by programming...

It's Ontario, B A. You don't wanna know... 

 

[Jarnhamar]

Now and then I read stories about Syrian refugees  upset and being mistreated - like in London a couple months ago blow
http://www.lfpress.com/2016/06/14/londons-cross-cultural-learner-centre-mistreated-refugees-20-just-arrived-syrians-say

Staff at the London Cross Cultural Learner Centre (CCLC) — the agency that settled more than 900 Syrians since December — “did not do their duties as they should,” states the letter.

The complaint goes on to list four examples in which the centre “failed to take care . . . and help,” said the refugees who signed it:

    The hotel many were placed in was understaffed and inadequate
    Medical services were not provided in a timely manner, leaving many kids very ill — “some we would argue were at risk of death”
    The food was “borderline unsuitable for human consumption”
    People have been forced into apartments, often too small for their families, without any choice of location

Few more quick examples.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/programs/metromorning/syrian-refugees-hotel-toronto-1.3418220
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/syrian-refugees-food-banks-1.3562887
http://www.metronews.ca/news/edmonton/2015/09/29/syrian-family-trapped-by-pests.html


I came across the story below about a 19 year old Syrian woman  holding the line so to speak and dying in the process.  It's got me thinking maybe instead of trying to mass settle tens of thousands of refugees (then seemingly forgetting about them) we should have been offering women like Asia Ramazan Antar (and men, of course) more support.



https://www.funker530.com/?s=heroic+19-year&limit=10&ixsl=1

Heroic 19-Year-Old YPJ Fighter Falls Stopping 3 ISIS SVBIEDs

Nineteen-year-old female YPJ Kurdish fighter Asia Ramazan Antar has been killed while stopping 3 ISIS SVBIEDs advancing on her position.

On September 9, 2016, a heroic YPJ fighter by the name of Asia Ramazan Antar, a light machine gunner, was killed in action. Three Daesh SVBIEDs were advancing on her units position, near the Kurdish front-lines, when she and the rest of her squad stayed in place to defeat them. Two of of the three vehicles were destroyed by the YPJ unit, but the third detonated close to their position, killing Antar immediately according to the YPJ spokeswoman Commander Shirin Abdullah.

Antar was known by western media as the “Kurdish Angelina Jolie,” because of her stunning good looks. Antar however preferred to own this name, not because of her looks, but because of her respect for the Jolie’s own humanitarian missions around the world. She joined the Women’s Protection Unit in 2014, at the age of 17, with the hopes of freeing other women in Syria. Her PKM was never far from her side, and according to the spokeswoman for her unit, she died firing it.

 

[The Bread Guy]

I came across the story below about a 19 year old Syrian woman  holding the line so to speak and dying in the process.  It's got me thinking maybe instead of trying to mass settle tens of thousands of refugees (then seemingly forgetting about them) we should have been offering women like Asia Ramazan Antar (and men, of course) more support.

https://www.funker530.com/?s=heroic+19-year&limit=10&ixsl=1

Here's where the "Kurds within Kurds" thing comes in -- the group this woman's fighting with is part of this Kurdish group, which is under this group, which Turkey says is still part of this group, which Canada still lists as a terrorist group.

Clear as mud, right?  ;D

 

[Jarnhamar]

Thanks for trying but no  not clear at all lol
What a mess.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Thanks for trying but no  not clear at all lol

You're not alone!

What a mess.

Sadly, that part IS clear ...

 

[The Bread Guy]

The NY Times shares the story of one family settled in Toronto, with a lot of stuff being sorted out at a lot of levels -- shared under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42)

Wonder and Worry, as a Syrian Child Transforms

Canada welcomes Syrian refugees like no other country. But for one 10-year-old’s parents, is she leaving too much behind?

By CATRIN EINHORN and JODI KANTORDEC. 17, 2016

TORONTO — As soon as Bayan Mohammad, a 10-year-old Syrian refugee, arrived here last winter, she began her transformation. In her first hour of ice-skating, she managed to glide on her own. She made fast friends with girls different from any she had ever known. New to competitive sports, she propelled herself down the school track so fast that she was soon collecting ribbons.

Bayan glued herself to the movie “Annie,” the ballet “Cinderella” and episodes of “Wheel of Fortune,” all stories of metamorphosis. As her English went from halting to chatty, she ticked off everything she hungered to do: An overnight school trip. Gymnastics lessons. Building a snowman — no, a snow-woman.

“I just want to be Canadian,” she said.

The volunteers resettling her family — a group of teachers, pediatricians and other friends and neighbors spurred by devastating images of young refugees and casualties of war — watched Bayan with wonder. Her parents, Abdullah and Eman Mohammad, a former grocery store owner and a nurse from a rural village, felt both pride and alarm.

Coming to Canada with their four children, they had braced themselves for the hostility that so many refugees were encountering around the world, including just across the border, where Donald J. Trump warned of the threat posed by Syrian refugees. Instead, they found a national movement to aid them.

As Syria shattered, everyday citizens, called private sponsors, were adopting the newcomers, donating their time and thousands of dollars to help guide them through their first year. The volunteers attended to the family’s every need: an apartment, doctors, tips on finding a mosque and halal food. The sponsors even applied to bring other family members to Canada — and still they wanted to know what more they could do.

The Mohammads were astonished and grateful. But over 10 months, the relationship was reshaping the family, rewriting roles and rules they had always followed. Abdullah and Eman found their marriage on new ground, the fundamental compact between them shifting. Bayan, their oldest child, was going from girl to adolescent, Middle Eastern to North American all at the same time. She was the one most likely to remember their now-obliterated life in Syria. On some days, her parents believed that she could meld her old and new identities; on others, they feared her Syrianness was being erased.

If the family had landed in Munich or Minneapolis, they would have encountered new cultural dilemmas, too. But Canada’s unusual private sponsorship system made them especially acute, because it was so intimate. The Canadians and Syrians were in and out of one another’s homes for tutoring, computer lessons or celebrations. They shared parental tasks like communication with teachers, since the Mohammads spoke little English. “What they gave us, a brother wouldn’t even give to his own brother,” Mr. Mohammad said.

Still, when one sponsor took the children to a ballet performance, Bayan twirled her way home and then begged for lessons — which would involve revealing outfits that would make her parents uncomfortable. The sponsors invited the children to make gingerbread houses and sing carols. Did saying yes mean that the strict Muslim family would be celebrating a Christian holiday?

“Sponsorship brings the tension between East and West so close,” said Sam Nammoura, a Syrian-Canadian refugee advocate in Calgary, Alberta.

The Mohammads had left Syria and then Jordan to safeguard their children — but once they arrived here, they were bewildered by what they found. Why were teenagers here allowed to stay out past midnight? Did children move away from home at 18 and never look back? How much control did parents even have?

“Every day I have this dilemma,” Mrs. Mohammad said. “Am I letting the kids do the right thing?”

In October, Bayan craved one item above all on her wish list: to join her school’s overnight trip. For three days at the end of the month, the whole fifth grade would travel to an island in Toronto’s harbor, exploring, conducting science experiments and sleeping in dorms.

“I want to go but my dad said no,” Bayan said over a family lunch of chicken and stuffed cabbage rolls.

Her parents felt their children belonged at home; they had never been on a sleepover.

“I want to go!” Bayan repeated. “I’m sad because my best friends are going.” By Canadian or American standards, she was being polite: no eye-rolling or accusations.

But in Syria, children are bound to respect the authority of their parents, even in adulthood. The rule had governed the Mohammad family for generations, backed up by relatives, friends, an entire culture. Within months of arriving in Canada, Bayan shocked her parents by beginning to question their decisions out loud.

“She’s stronger now, here, and she tries to express herself more than in Syria,” her mother explained.

Bayan knew she had a quiet ally at the lunch table that day: Kerry McLorg, the organizer of the sponsor group. Meticulous and restrained, Ms. McLorg never wanted to push the Mohammads, and when they asked for her advice, she tended to answer with clinical distance, lest her own preferences show.

But she knew Bayan yearned for the adventure. She and the other sponsors saw it as another step in the girl’s integration into Canada. Her two children had gone on the trip years ago and still talked about the traditions — visiting a lighthouse, telling ghost stories.

“Every kid in Toronto does this,” Ms. McLorg had told Bayan’s parents when they had asked. “Academically, it’s not important. But socially, it is very important.”

Mr. Mohammad told Bayan again: No trip. He was not an immigrant who set out to adapt to a new world; he was a refugee trying to hold on to what had been ripped from him. “We’re forced to be here,” Mr. Mohammad said later. “We’re happy, but we’re forced to be here.”

He still had a shot at preserving the identity he wanted for Bayan, but he and his wife would have to be vigilant, willing to deny their daughter some of what she wanted.

“I will do this for her,” he said. “God help us.”

Shifting Family Dynamics

Only one thing about Canada seemed to disconcert Bayan: its types of families she had never seen or even imagined. She was troubled by the concept of divorce, by classmates whose parents lived in separate homes. “My mom and dad, they will not do that,” she declared.

The Mohammads were from a particularly conservative village in Daraa Province. Their union was arranged by their families and governed by clear tenets. Back home, Eman Mohammad, 36, did not leave the house without asking her husband’s permission. She did not socialize with men who were not relatives. Women in the village did not drive. Against the odds, and Abdullah’s initial reluctance, she had worked as a nurse, one of only a few women in her circle to be employed outside the home after having children.

Now she was far more at home in Canada than he was. She attended her first modern dance performance, thrilled by the surprise and emotion. When her husband, 36, turned down a supermarket job this summer, unsure of what kind of work he wanted, she joked that she would take it. She was determined to get certified as a nurse again, even though that would require years of language instruction and coursework.

Meanwhile, she found new purpose: helping lead a therapy group for Syrian women coping with trauma and displacement. Standing in front of a whiteboard, she peppered her presentations with motivational statements: “Nothing is impossible.” “When we work, we are helping society around us, not ourselves alone.” She earned about 70 Canadian dollars for each weekly session.

Being in Canada “opened new doors for me that I didn’t even know existed,” Mrs. Mohammad said.

Her husband, however, was having difficulty. In Syria, he co-owned a grocery store and two butcher shops, and had been the unquestioned head of the household. Now the sponsors were helping support his family, along with government subsidies. While his wife went to one of the therapy groups, he took care of Bayan and the younger children, and he had been helping in the kitchen.

“Sometimes I feel weak doing these things,” he said. “It’s a woman’s job.” He told himself that spending more time with his children would draw them closer.

Bayan had ambitions for her father: to learn to swim, to drive, to buy a car with six seats. “I dream, like, all the time we have a big house and a pool,” she said.

But Mr. Mohammad was nowhere near finding work that could support a family of six in an expensive city, and he felt torn about whether he should continue to study English full time or just get the best job he could. “I feel lost,” he had said. Because his wife’s language skills were better, he sometimes was left out of conversations. (The Mohammads asked not to be identified by their full surnames, because they feared reprisals against relatives still in Syria. This article uses part of their family name.)

If Syria heals, Mr. Mohammad said, he definitely wants to go back.

His wife countered: “My future and my kids’ future is in this country.”

We have been reporting on Canada's unusual welcome of Syrian refugees for nearly a year, paying frequent visits to the Mohammad family, the volunteers helping them, and other Syrians and Canadians involved in private sponsorship.

Then they laughed. The marriages of many Syrians who had come to Canada were far more strained, they knew, the traditional arrangements difficult to replant on new soil. Mrs. Mohammad’s counseling groups were filled with women whose husbands had turned bitter at the changed circumstances. Some wives were finally reporting years of domestic abuse.

The Mohammads tried to mitigate their differences with kindness. She found ways to telegraph respect for her husband’s authority — before buying a new dress, she texted him a photo and the price for approval. For fortitude with child care duties, he turned to Islamic teachings about the value of helping one’s wife. The two had long conversations about a new favorite word, “flexibility.”

Even as Eman Mohammad craved opportunities for herself, she was not sure how much freedom she wanted for Bayan. In Syria, the path was restrictive but clear. If the war had never happened, she would already be wearing a head scarf and attending a girls’ school. Most girls in her village married at 14 or 15, though the Mohammads would have waited until at least 18. Even if she pursued university there, she would not go on unsupervised dates, get offered a beer at a party, or live alone.

Now that she was in Canada, her mother felt, there was no longer a map for her daughter’s life. “I want to try everything here,” Bayan said.

On the day of the school trip, with her classmates off on Toronto Island in a freezing rain, the family moved on to their next cultural debate.

“What is the meaning of Halloween?” Mrs. Mohammad asked. The holiday was four days away.

Bayan burst with answers. It was about being frightened in a fun way, she said, dressing as skeletons and ghosts. “It has to be something scary,” she explained. She wanted to wear a devil costume.

One of the sponsors had already arranged to take them trick-or-treating. But what Mrs. Mohammad had heard about the holiday made her dubious. Her children would celebrate death and horror, after they had escaped the real thing? Should she worry that her daughter wanted to dress as a symbol of evil? Did Canadians really believe in people coming back from the dead?

Just then, Ms. McLorg arrived at the family’s apartment with a giant pumpkin for the children to carve. Bayan had asked Ms. McLorg to join them for the coming trick-or-treat date, but the sponsor did not realize how Mrs. Mohammad felt.

Ms. McLorg was trying to introduce Canadian customs without imposing on the family’s own. “They should not have to change their essence in order to become Canadian,” Ms. McLorg said later. In fact, the country officially encourages new arrivals to maintain their own culture.

In the end, they all celebrated Halloween. Another sponsor hosted them for dinner and cookies: long slivers of shortbread with red icing and almond nails, meant to look like bloody fingers. Ms. McLorg arrived in a pink bunny suit. On the costume question, Bayan and her mother had reached a middle ground: a zombie princess.

Abdullah Mohammad headed home early; Bayan pleaded to stay later. Her mother surveyed the spiderwebs and chains lacing the street, watching her children merge into the flowing highway of trick-or-treaters.

Memories of Home

Two weeks later, Mrs. Mohammad and her two daughters were propelled into a local Walmart by Bayan’s sheer force of will. She longed for a pair of sparkly purple sneakers, and begged, nagged and nearly cried until her mother agreed.

As they navigated the aisles, mother and daughters looked like members of two different families. Mrs. Mohammad wore her head scarf, neck-to-toe gown and shawl, while the girls were in leggings and skinny jeans.

The question about when Bayan would start covering her head loomed over her and her parents. As they were in Canada, her mother was willing to postpone it until seventh grade.

“No!” Bayan yelled when she overheard her mother talking about it. She looked ugly with her head covered, she thought. “When I’m in grade nine — maybe,” she said.

But the next day, Bayan and her mother slipped inside a building a few blocks from their apartment, where the 10-year-old kicked off the brand-new sneakers and knelt. Her mother draped a thin scarf over her daughter’s head, expertly folding, tucking and pinning until it covered her hair without a strand showing.

This was Islamic school at the mosque, a new fixture of Bayan’s Sundays. For several hours, she studied written Arabic, verses of the Quran and Islamic values with other children. It was the only activity of hers that the sponsors had not been involved in planning; that day, they were taking the rest of the family to a Santa parade, which Bayan was disappointed to miss.

Sunday mornings were a compromise between Bayan and her parents: the single time each week, for now, that she would cover her head.

For the main lesson that day, the teacher, Maimoonah Ali, an 18-year-old whose parents came to Canada as refugees from Eritrea, passed out colored Popsicle sticks and instructed the students to snap them. The sound of splintering wood filled the room. “Sometimes there are tests in life,” she told the children. “And sometimes they break us.”

Then she collected the remaining sticks into a tight bundle. One by one, the students strained and failed to break them. “It’s really, really difficult to break things when they’re all together, right?” Ms. Ali asked. “And that’s exactly like us.”

But it was not clear how much the class was going to do to help secure Bayan’s Syrian identity. In English, she could read at “Cat in the Hat” level, but her Arabic reading was worse, because the war had interrupted her schooling. Bayan was supposed to repeat the verses that a classmate was saying that day, but her partner did not speak Arabic, and Bayan could barely understand her. She was the only Syrian in the school.

Other classmates’ parents came from Algeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Mali. Half the population of Toronto is foreign-born, a reflection of Canada’s openness to immigrants. In her apartment building, Bayan has friends whose families are from Israel and China.

When her father picked her up, she could not take off her hijab fast enough. During lunch at home, as she chatted in English, he interjected: “Arabic!” She continued in a mix of both.

When she talked about the stick exercise, her father gave a look of recognition. “I was Bayan’s age when they told me the same story,” he said.

Their childhoods seemed so disconnected from one another’s. The family left Syria when Bayan was 7 or 8 — they had foundered in Jordan before coming to Canada — and her memories of the home where her family had lived for three generations were dimming.

She could picture playing hide-and-seek with her cousins by the fountain and grapevines in the courtyard, and recall the way an adjacent garden produced enough mint for the whole neighborhood. But Bayan and her sister could no longer agree on how many olive trees stood there: 20? 100? (Eight, their mother said.)

After the Mohammads left Syria, the house next door was shelled or bombed and collapsed on their own home. It was ruined now, the second story gone. The sponsors helped them use Google Maps to try to find what was left, but no one could quite pinpoint it.

“I love that house,” Bayan had said a few days before.

Suddenly, her confidence and determination kicked in.

“We’re going to build it,” she said. “My siblings. All of us.”

 

[PuckChaser]

Frontloaded Syrian refugees for the good press, Liberal government imposing hard cap of 1,000 privately sponsored Syrians coming to Canada next year as an early Christmas present:

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/12/24/ottawas-new-cap-on-refugee-applications-upsets-sponsors.html

Ottawa’s new cap on refugee applications upsets sponsors

Private sponsors fear new 1,000-application limit for 2017 will prevent many refugees from escaping danger of war-torn Syria.
Sat., Dec. 24, 2016

The federal government will cap new applications for private sponsorship of Syrian and Iraqi refugees at 1,000 in 2017, due to a backlog and long wait times faced by those whose applications are still being processed.

But some feel the move, announced earlier this week by Citizenship and Immigration Minister John McCallum, betrays the positive global perception Canada has seen since late last year when the Liberals took office and committed to accepting more refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria.

“The government’s playing politics here, on the one hand saying we should be celebrated for being welcoming, and then on the other hand stopping people from being able to get to safety,” said Lesley Wood, a sociology professor at York University who has sponsored two Syrian refugee families.

The government’s policy, which came into effect Dec. 19, places a limit of 1,000 sponsorship applications for the next year by groups of five people or more and community sponsors such as organizations.

It “forms part of a broader strategy to address the large backlog and long wait times in the Privately Sponsored Refugees category,” according to the government.

Nearly 39,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in Canada since November 2015, of which 13,700 have been privately sponsored. But Canada4Refugees, which represents private sponsorship groups, estimated earlier this month fewer than one-third of refugees who applied before April have arrived in Canada, with more than 5,000 applications still being processed.

Wood helped sponsor a family of six who are from near Aleppo and arrived in Canada this past June. The Syrian government took full control of the city, once the stronghold of the rebellion, on Thursday, marking President Bashar Assad’s most significant victory over opposition fighters since the uprising began five years ago.

“They’re worried about their family members,” said Wood. “We’re just starting a new sponsorship to try and raise the money for the woman’s sister, who’s got six kids, so a family of eight. News like this makes us wonder whether we’re going to be able to bring her and her kids. It’s absurd.”

Wood also helped sponsor a second family of four individuals who lost two children in the war. However, she said, they are stuck right now in Jordan because their applications haven’t been processed.

“We were expecting them a year ago, so even when the numbers were moving fast, they weren’t moving fast enough for people whose lives are in danger,” she said.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Who can blame the hair?  The selfie cow on this issue must be just about milked dry by now.

 

[Jarnhamar]

prevent many refugees from escaping danger of war-torn Syria.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the refugees we accepted were not dodging AK fire while running to get on airplanes. They were in UN refugee camps for years. And give or take, less than 3000 of the some 30'000 initially didnèt even want to come to Canada.  Some had to wait until their property and effects were sold.

Hardly life or death.

 

[George Wallace]

I still see that so many are not making the distinction between refugees and immigrants.  Refugees, as I understand it are fleeing the fighting until such time as it is safe to return home.  Immigrants are intentionally moving, for whatever reasons, to make homes in a new country and become citizens of that new country.  If we are talking about bringing in refugees, then what is the Government plan to return them to their homes at a future date when it will be safe to do so?

 

[Remius]

I still see that so many are not making the distinction between refugees and immigrants.  Refugees, as I understand it are fleeing the fighting until such time as it is safe to return home.  Immigrants are intentionally moving, for whatever reasons, to make homes in a new country and become citizens of that new country.  If we are talking about bringing in refugees, then what is the Government plan to return them to their homes at a future date when it will be safe to do so?

Nowhere does it state that the intent is to send them back.  Both refugees and immigrants are treated with the goal of integration.  The distinction is limited as to the why they are leaving their country to come to Canada. 

This is from the CIC web site.

Canada’s resettlement programs are respected internationally because they provide permanent residence as a long term solution.

More here at the site that explains Canada's refugee system.  There is no mention of returning them at any point.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/ENGLISH/refugees/canada.asp

 

[George Wallace]

Nowhere does it state that the intent is to send them back.  Both refugees and immigrants are treated with the goal of integration.  The distinction is limited as to the why they are leaving their country to come to Canada. 

This is from the CIC web site.

Canada’s resettlement programs are respected internationally because they provide permanent residence as a long term solution.

More here at the site that explains Canada's refugee system.  There is no mention of returning them at any point.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/ENGLISH/refugees/canada.asp

And Remius, you confirm my statement.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I still see that so many are not making the distinction between refugees and immigrants.  Refugees, as I understand it are fleeing the fighting until such time as it is safe to return home.  Immigrants are intentionally moving, for whatever reasons, to make homes in a new country and become citizens of that new country.  If we are talking about bringing in refugees, then what is the Government plan to return them to their homes at a future date when it will be safe to do so?

The notion that refugees wanted to return home was never enshrined in law ... it existed, as something more than just an idea, prior to the 1940s, but the situation of millions of "displaced persons" in Europe in 1945 put paid to any thought of making "return" part of the equation ~ except, of course, for the Palestinians where the "right of return" is a major political tool.

In a perfect world refugees should be cared for in safe, well managed, places of refuge near their homes ... where and when numbers permit. But how in hell do we "manage" hundreds of thousands of refugees (small cities, actually) in e.g. Dadaab in Kenya, Dollo Ado in Ethiopia or Al Zaatri in Jordan? Do we really believe we can resettle everyone back to Somalia or Syria? But, equally, how many of those refugees are "ready" to adapt to life in Australia or Belgium or Canada? Do we make things better by resettling people here or should we spend billions to make the camps better, safer and so on?

 

[Remius]

And Remius, you confirm my statement.

I was actually trying to refute this statement: Refugees, as I understand it are fleeing the fighting until such time as it is safe to return home.

That is a common thought about our refugee system but isn't actual policy.  Hence why there will never be a plan to send them back.  And good luck to the poor fool who tries to make that policy part of any party platform.

I do agree though with Mr. CAmpbell's perfect world argument.

 

[Canuck_Jock]

I think the government’s consistent policy is to presume that resettlement of refugees is permanent. This paper compares the Canadian and Australian response to Kosovan refugees: here.  Once Kosovo was secured by NATO, Australia giving them a big cheerio whilst Canada gave them the choice of staying or leaving.

Similarly, in 1998 Germany required that all Bosnian refugees left the country having declared the country safe.
Whether it is right to do is a matter of debate.  Certainly, if refugees were admitted only for the duration of a conflict, then I think the host population at large would be more accommodating.  Alternatively, some conflicts are protracted to decades long, and there is so much power on the migrant/immigrant/refugee advocate industry that I think it is a political non-starter.

Morally, is it questionable to retain refugees?  I see that Germany has commenced a low level programme of teaching the trades so that refugees (70% of the 1 million are working age males) can put them to good use on their return.  There is historic precedent as the quarter million Belgian refugees in the UK 1914-18 were largely concentrated in clumps together and administered themselves.

Imagine if Canada had a policy of teaching refugees construction skills, accountancy, engineering, administration, etc. so that they could help rebuild Syria on their return?  It might prove controversial.  Call me cynical, but no more selfies?? No more heart rending stories of Syrians telling us how fantastic we are and how grateful they are and how much they love Canada. Some segments of the political class can be a bit needy at times.

Although I think it good we have helped several thousand of them, ultimately, there effect would probably be greater in Syria (at war’s end) than here in the longer term.  Certainly, Professor Paul Collier (‘Exodus’) believes that a generous refugee policy followed by a return at conflict’s end, is the best way to rebuild a war torn state.  He calls the returning diaspora, a country’s ‘sovereign wealth fund’.

 

[George Wallace]

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Lack of jobs, housing: why some of Canada's Syrian refugees are relocating
CBC - The Current
Tuesday January 03, 2017

A year ago this December, the first wave of Syrian refugees to Canada arrived in their new homes across the country. But for some, home is still another big move away.

In what's being called a second migration, many refugees from Syria are packing up their lives once again in an effort to find work, to be near family and friends, or even for better weather.

In 2012, Lina Arafeh left Syria for Turkey, and in September moved to Halifax as a refugee, privately sponsored by her friend.

"I love life in Halifax. I love the people. They're very hospitable. The schools are amazing," Arafeh tells The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.

Arafeh has nine children, five of whom are grown. Her other four are here with her in Canada.

"They have helped my kids adjust. They're doing very very well. I'm happy."

Nonetheless, Arafeh says she plans to move to Toronto when her year of private sponsorship is up. As a  professional interpreter, there are job opportunities in Toronto that don't exist in Halifax.

She says her children are resilient when it comes to having to relocate again.

"These kids I don't know what they're made of. Diamond maybe," she says.

New Brunswick has resettled more refugees per capita than any other province.

About five per cent of Syrian refugees who have settled in New Brunswick this year have left the province and those moves can be hard for the people who sponsor them, according to Janet Hunt. She's part of a welcome team with the YMCA helping government-assisted Syrian families settle in and around Saint John.

Related: Saint John losing Syrian newcomers to larger cities

Three of the families Hunt helped support have left New Brunswick hoping to find job opportunities. But one special family decided to try for one more year mostly because of their close connection to Hunt.

"We've become more than friends,"  Hunt tells Tremonti. "We've become this extended family to each other."

Since last January, settlement agencies estimate that 500 families have moved to Windsor, Ont., from other parts of Canada — the majority are Syrian.

Hugo Vega, chair of Windsor Essex Local Immigration Partnership, says Windsor's large Arabic speaking population, inexpensive housing, and weather make it an attractive location.

Mayas Altahan and her family originally settled in Moncton but moved to Windsor in September.

"I have family members here and they were able to support me, especially with my kids and also the weather. It was cold [in Moncton] and here it's warmer," Altahan says.

"Windsor is different," says Altahan's husband  Ali Alashram.

"I feel safe and happy like the way it was in Syria before."

Vega says this ability to choose the right home is part of what it means to be Canadian.

"They have freedom of mobility and that's something we embrace as far as their choice as a newcomer to be here."

"They've spent time in a conflict that didn't allow them any freedom."

Listen to the full segment at the top of this post.

This segment was produced by The Current's Willow Smith.

More on LINK.

 

[George Wallace]

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Canadians are right to be concerned about border security
By Candice Malcolm
First posted: Friday, April 14, 2017 06:09 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, April 14, 2017 06:17 PM EDT

There is a crisis on our southern border. And Canadian officials seem woefully unprepared to deal with the ongoing flow of migrants illegally crossing into Canada.

These illegal crossings create a real security threat, and Canadians are not happy about it.

An Angus Reid poll is the latest to convey this, finding that nearly three-quarters of Canadians prefer a focus on border security rather than providing aid to those illegally crossing into Canada.

There is near unanimous agreement on the fact that these migrants pose a threat to our national security. Of those surveyed, half say the risk of dangerous people entering Canada is ‘significant’ or ‘huge,’ while 93% agreed there is some level of risk.

Canadians are right to be concerned about the self-proclaimed and self-selected refugees coming in through the back door.

A remarkable video by Faith Goldy of The Rebel Media reveals part of the problem.

On a rural road in upstate New York, Goldy’s video captures the moment when a taxi pulls up and drops off a would-be asylum seeker near the border.

“Sir, where are you from?” she asks. “Syria,” he replies as he proceeds towards the border. An RCMP officer can be seen trying to deter the man from crossing illegally.

“Please stop, you cannot enter here,” says the officer. “If you enter here, sir, you will be arrested and criminal charges can be pressed against you.”

“I’m not safe. I’m a refugee,” says the man, repeatedly, as he ignores instructions from police and continues towards Canada.

The RCMP officer instructs the man to report to the Canadian border, three miles away, but the man insists the police do it his way instead.

“Arrest me from here. We will phone them,” he says, and the police finally follow his command. “You’re under arrest” they can be heard saying, as they escort him away while helping carry his luggage.

It’s an unbelievable exchange, and it shows the docile attitude towards protecting our borders.

This asylum seeker knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that if he entered Canada at an official crossing, he would be met by a CBSA officer. The CBSA guard would be able to determine his admissibility to Canada, and has the power to reject him on the spot.

At a land crossing away from a border station, however, there are no CBSA guards – just RCMP officers who have been sent to patrol the border.

This man has clearly been coached. Someone told him exactly where to go and what to say to enter Canada. And it worked. Not only did this man circumvent our immigration laws, he also bypassed our Syrian refugee program.

Under Justin Trudeau, Canada has generously accepted nearly 50,000 Syrian refugees from the war-torn region.

But to address the security risks – the valid concerns about our ability to screen and vet individuals from a hot bed of Islamist terrorism – the Trudeau government limited the program.

Canada only accepts women, children and families from Syria. The program explicitly excludes single men.

That’s because our security officers believe that admitting single, unaccompanied men from Syria is simply too dangerous.

Yet, somehow, a single, unaccompanied man claiming to be from Syria was able to walk right into Canada — without so much as showing his ID.

No wonder Canadians are concerned. These illegal migrants are acting as though our rules and our laws don’t exist. And, shockingly, our officials are too.

More on LINK.

Well briefed, well coached, persons are being taken to unofficial Border Crossings, and circumventing the system.  These persons can be from any origin, not necessarily Syria, and as such are abusing our Policies.  The Government is showing little concern publicly on this matter.  No wonder people are becoming concerned.

 

[jmt18325]

What exactly could the police have done differently in that exchange?  I see no way, short of erecting a barrier, of changing that.