OTTAWA – Canada has taken in 1,500 Syrian refugees, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander told the House of Commons Monday.
The government had been under pressure from opposition politicians to bring more refugees to Canada more quickly.
“If they are here, where the heck are they?” NDP MP Andrew Cash asked. “Response by this government has been incredibly slow and it’s not commensurate with the tragedy unfolding.”
Alexander said the system has been improved so that refugees can get to Canada more quickly.
New readers interested in Canada’s refugee problems, go here for our archive on our “welcoming” northern neighbor.
By the way, how many Canadians (former refugees and others welcomed by Canada in years past) are fighting with ISIS now?
Well, they have some other excuses, but that is the gist of it.
Unlike the US Canada still has some private charity for refugees.
Study is from Citizens for Public Justice – A member-driven, faith-based, public policy org. Research and analysis on poverty, ecological justice, and refugees in Canada.
Canada has both a government refugee resettlement program and one where churches and other civic groups can sponsor a family privately.
We previously had private sponsorship too until Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden (and other far Left Senators) pushed through the Refugee Act of 1980which set up the present system (ostensibly a public-private partnership that is pretty much all public money) where you (the taxpayer) pay churches and some secular agencies to care for refugees for a brief period of time via resettlement contractors.
Now it looks like Canada’s private sponsorship isn’t going so well—when people have to use their own personal funds to take care of refugees their humanitarian zeal starts to wane.
I’m thinking the US should go to completely private sponsorship and then we would find out very quickly who really cares for refugees—those willing to put their money where their mouth is!
Here is the news from The Star. Read between the lines—they don’t have enough private charitable dollars! And, in a “blended” form of the program, they want to be able to pick the ethnic groups they care about and not have families chosen for them.
Bureaucratic delays and federal cuts to health coverage are hurting the ability of churches and other groups to bring in refugees under Canada’s renowned private refugee sponsorship program, says a new study.
Based on a survey of the 85 private groups that have formal refugee sponsorship agreements with Ottawa, recent policy changes appear to threaten the vitality of the sponsorship program launched in 1978 amid an outpouring of public concern over the Southeast Asian “boat people” crisis.
Groups were concerned with waits that stretch into years, and “processing hurdles that jeopardize their … future engagement in resettlement work,” said the survey conducted by the advocacy group Citizens for Public Justice.
“Cuts to the Interim Federal Health program (for refugees) have left church-based and other voluntary sponsoring groups on the line for previously-covered supplemental health costs,” said the 15-page report, titled Private Sponsorship and Public Policy.
“About one-third . . . report that their sponsoring groups have had to decrease or end their involvement in the PSR (private sponsorship of refugees) program as a result of this increased liability.”
Since 1978, more than 200,000 refugees have come to Canada through the efforts and financial support of faith groups, individuals, and community and ethnic organizations plugged into the program. In 2013 alone, 6,623 privately sponsored refugees were resettled in Canada.
Seventy-two per cent of the agreement holders are churches or church-connected groups, including Mennonite, Christian Reformed, United, Alliance and Presbyterian denominations.
Reader Paul directs us to Powerline blog here which begins with this line:
We have a profoundly serious problem of illegal immigration, but we also have a problem of legal immigration, Unfortunately, it is a problem that can barely be discussed. Is there anyone who thinks the continued stream of Muslim immigration from countries with active jihadist groups is a good idea?
Yup! The US State Department and all of its refugee resettlement contractors*** think it’s a perfectly good idea and we, at RRW, have been discussing it for years.
Powerline then directs us to Canadian writer David Solway who says this, and much more, here at PJ Media last week:
How, some of us on this side of the Atlantic have begun to ask, have these people with their baggage of noisome and culturally vetted proclivities come to be among us? For years we have taken no notice, content to embrace the sedatives and platitudes of multiculturalism, until a moment comes when we are abruptly made aware and taken aback by an alien and unaccommodating presence, one that has been metastasizing for decades while we voluntarily turned a blind eye.
[….]
Anyone with a modicum of perceptiveness must be cognizant by now that Islam is advancing its millennial agenda in two ways, that is, via a classic pincer movement: the tactic of terrorism, and the strategy of immigration as elaborated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the latter project an immensely powerful force owing to its stealthy and insidious nature, abetted by leftist and liberal sympathies and policies. By this time its cover should have been blown, and we must begin to speak out, to agitate for legislation to revise our immigration protocols, to reject outright the social camouflage of political correctness, to expose “outreach” and “interfaith” programs for the confidence games they are, to investigate the hotbed mosques spreading like bunkers throughout the land, and to lobby our congressional and parliamentary representatives to pass laws militating against the depletion of our welfare resources, the exploitation of our legal system to silence critics of Islam (known as “lawfare”), and the use of our human rights tribunals that deprive us of our…human rights.
[….]
There is no longer any excuse for apathy, distraction or ignorance, for the evidence of our approaching dispossession is all around us.
Could it be that Obama Administration pals in the No Borders movement (including the Catholic Church) used the “children” as pawns and started the stampede northward? I think so, and hope one day we will all have the truth.
In the meantime, here comes a worldwide study that puts El Salvador and Guatemala in the top ten countries where people are most satisfied with their lives, while the US is number 12!
From the Daily Mail(hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’). A picture is worth a thousand words:
Latin America is the place to feel happy: Seven of the top 10 countries in the well-being poll hailed from the Americas, with Canada rounding out the top 10. Six of the 10 worst were from Africa
Here is how the article begins (Respondents were asked to rate their well-being over five categories: purpose, social, financial, community and physical):
People in Panama feel happiest about their lives, according to a new global well-being poll in which the U.S. finished 12th and the United Kingdom 26th.
There were six Latin American countries in the top 10 in the poll, which asked people to measure their well-being across five key areas.
Panamanians were well above the world average for feeling positive about their lives – 61 per cent were found to be ‘thriving’ in at least three of the five facets – compared with just 17 per cent internationally.
Why such a stiff sentence for ‘attempted’ murder of one gang member by another?
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune last week (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):
A St. Paul man was sentenced to 18 years in prison for what a Hennepin County prosecutor called a brazen and unprovoked shooting at a Minneapolis food store last year.
Zakaria Yusuf, 25, was convicted of attempted second-degree murder in June. His sentence was the maximum allowed under the state’s sentencing guidelines. Judge Daniel Moreno said Yusuf continues to be arrogant and to have a complete disregard for other people’s lives.
Judge Daniel Moreno: Yusuf is arrogant and has a complete disregard for human life.
According to the criminal complaint and testimony at the trial, the victim, who is a member of the Somali Outlawz Gang, was standing outside the store at 201 W. Lake St. on Sept. 22, talking with two of his friends. Yusuf, who was known to associate with the St. Pistol Boys gang in St. Paul and Somali gangs in the Cedar-Riverside area, walked up to the group, pulled a gun from his waistband and fired it at the victim, hitting him in the arm.
The victim ran into the store and Yusuf kept firing, hitting him several more times. The victim collapsed and Yusuf fired one more time from the doorway, with the bullet hitting the victim’s arm when he threw it across his head for protection. He was hospitalized at Hennepin County Medical Center and eventually was discharged.
However, the victim refused to cooperate with the prosecution and was placed under court-ordered electronic home monitoring to be sure he would show up at the trial.
Meanwhile in Canada, a research project sought to find out why so many Somali youths in Edmonton were turning up dead, but it looks like the same old excuses—not enough opportunity, struggling with the cultural differences, blah, blah, blah.
Click here for our archive on Somali gang violence in Edmonton. There need to be serious consequences for immigrant criminal gangs, maybe this judge is doing exactly the right thing with this stiff sentence for the arrogant punk.
By the way, as usual I couldn’t find a readily identifiable photo of the convicted Minnesota man, but found this one of someone (a mean looking dude) with the same name from the same city who in 2010 was arrested for beating a “good Samaritan.” Surely they didn’t let that Zakaria Yusuf out that quickly! Or, did they?
And, just think! You raised these ‘youths’ on your dime!
