Safe haven

There’s a fissure forming. People are taking sides. The boundaries extend beyond party lines. It is a question of the limits of our compassion and the strength of our national pride. And the catalyst for it all, it seems, is one tragic image.

Refugees have been seeking asylum in Canada for more than a century. Sometimes it has been small groups of people, ostracized and in danger because of their religion or their race. Sometimes it has been larger groups, fleeing war, natural disasters and militaristic rule. The world sees Canada as a safe haven, so the world comes here.

But as one County organization prepares to receive a large refugee family from Syria, there is an undercurrent of resentment and frustration rumbling underground.

A mind-boggling number of Syrians have been displaced by war. Millions are making the slow and perilous journey out of the country. Those with a little more youth and money have found ways to bring themselves to safety.

Others are bouncing from country to country, hitting one closed border after another.

Still more nightmarish are the overcrowded refugee camps where humanitarian workers are doing what they can to prevent millions of residents from dying of disease or starvation.

Canada is a safe haven.

But for all the help those with good intentions want to give, 15 people is not a concept, it’s 15 whole lives. Fifteen people who will have language and cultural barriers. People who will have ideas and beliefs and behaviours that won’t always mesh with the society they are being helicoptered into.

They will meet with people who don’t think they should be here. People who wish such concern had been shown to the veterans or first nations people already here and also in dire straits, though not as acute. They will meet with resentment and frustration. At the same time as they struggle to find jobs, they might even be accused of stealing jobs from those who came before them.

The reality of an immigrant to this country is not so rosy. Those with degrees and professional designations find themselves heading back to school to start over in a country that doesn’t accept their credentials. Those without will seek the Canadian experience they need to get hired—a hopeless catch-22.

Immigrants are told their cultures are welcomed here, but are sometimes penalized for asserting those cultures by that same undercurrent of frustration, a cultural undertow of, dare I say it, oldstock Canadians. Not everyone resists, but it hardly takes away the sting.

The world has witnessed terrible tragedies from the throngs fleeing Syria. It’s not the first or the worst conflict we’ve seen, and it’s not new. The people who have left need to go somewhere, and if there is the money and willpower to bring some of them here, it’s something.

But these are not Emily Post houseguests. These are people who will come to stay and bring all the complicated problems people have. I just hope the County—all of it—is ready.

mihal@mihalzada.com