Canadian officials are working diligently to ensure that all Syrian refugees approved to enter our country are properly vetted
Even the most compassionate Canadians acknowledge that with an influx of refugees there will be some social challenges. No one, however, expects to see the grief that Germany is dealing with after a spate of incidents on New Year’s Eve. A series of assaults against women – as many as 500 – in Cologne is…
Assimilation has become a dirty word, with anyone who advocates it liable to be accused of promoting cultural genocide
The American political commentator Reihan Salam has recently written about the need to create “a new melting-pot nationalism suited to our own time.” The old approach, in his view, doesn’t fit with current socio-economic reality. What worked to integrate, say, Italian-Americans in the 1900s no longer works today. Salam’s essay focuses on the impact of…
The arrival of Syrian refugees to Canada will be a humanitarian triumph and, like with previous refugees, a benefit to the economy
Canada has always had a soft spot for refugees who have shaped our nation’s history, fuelled its economic growth, defined its social fabric and influenced its political direction. This tradition began most significantly in 1783 with the arrival of United Empire Loyalists seeking safe haven from the American Revolution. About 33,000 settled in New Brunswick…
"By making Syrian refugees the enemy, we are playing into (the terrorists') hands"
If ever there was a lame excuse to turn away Syrian refugees, it is to be found in the straw man that opening our doors to desperate people will allow terrorists to sneak into our country. No question, Justin Trudeau’s pledge to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by Jan. 1, 2016 will strain our authorities to…
Compassion for the suffering of others not often shared by others in the world
The impact of the chaotic migration from the Middle East to Europe and beyond is more sensed than understood. How, for example, did the migrant crisis come to “dominate debate,” as a recent newspaper headline put it last week, in the Canadian election campaign? A beginning, if not the beginning, lay in U.S. President Barack…
Wanting to limit the number of refugees to preserve your way of life doesn’t make you a bad person
As hundreds of thousands of migrants flood Europe’s borders, some of us will recall Jean Raspail’s apocalyptic 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints. Fiercely controversial, Raspail’s story depicts an uninvited seaborne mass migration from the Third World to Europe, landing initially on the shores of the French Riviera. Unable or unwilling to turn it…