A man who put up $1.5M to help 200 Syrian refugees
torontolife.com
torontolife.com
Europe is vacuuming up anyone who wants to join so that they don't stay in the warzone and possibly turn against them.
Even if you want all the migrants you can get, it's a terrible plan because they often accidentally sink themselves near vessels that can't take them onboard and drown, or leave in vessels that aren't seaworthy because they think they'll get picked up, and when they don't they drown.
The flood of people into Europe was less than 1/4 Syrians, and those that were were mostly young males and not too many families.
Merkel made a huge mistake by opening the borders.
Disastrous.
It would have been more humane, safe, and cheaper to pluck refugees from the UN camps.
German government could have paid Lufthansa 400 Euros per flight, flown them in from Lebanon right to the spots in Germany. Processed them ahead of time, got them lined up with housing etc. etc..
Instead, many died in transit, it cause political chaos - and terrorists got into the country: the incident this weekend was by a Tunisian, denied status but 'allowed to stay' (meaning he will never leave). No doubt he's angry - as will the 100's of thousands of Tunisians, Pakistanis and others who will not be given status, but 'allowed to stay' and therefore live in a grey zone.
I believe most Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanis will be given status, the rest, not.
Yes, having an ocean in between is an advantage.
If Canada were to receive a proportionally large number of refugees that would be about 450 000 refugees. In actuality Canada has received about 35 000. An order of magnitude less.
The Canadian refugee system is/was under no where near the amount of stress that the European states are/were.
(Some European countries like Hungary for example have behaved thoroughly Xenophobic during these events and are frankly embarrassing to be associated with)
[1] http://www.migrationsverket.se/English/About-the-Migration-A...
[2] http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/welcome/milestones.asp
Sweden did an amazing job in the last 30 years picking up the mess that the rest of the WHOLE WORLD keeps making. They have been left alone and now they are struggling. Germany is now reaching a similar status. It can't go on like that.
One thing that would likely help is linking seats on the UN Security Council to refugee quotas. You shouldn't be able to decide what goes on without accepting responsibility for picking up your rubbish.
Great idea, but it will never pass while certain countries possesses and abuses their veto[0] on pretty much any deal that has some impact on real world.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...
I mean nearly everybody knows that foreigners and xenophobia are correlated.
EDIT: This is a genuine question. I might not agree with the answers, but I want to know what makes people make this distinction.
The term Economic migrants is used for those that are not in immediate danger, just in search of a better living situation. If the economic situation in your country is so bad there is widespread starvation you'd qualify as a refugee, if I as a european move to the US because tech jobs there pay better I'd still be an economic migrant.
Asylum is an exception to other immigration rules for those that really need it. If you are not in danger, you should follow the normal rules.
The Capital for economic migrants and the State for war refugees.
edit: I said economic migrants who lie about being refugees are a security threat, not the actual Syrian refugees.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/20/everything-know-s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Maria_Ladenburger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year's_Eve_sexual_assaults...
As an American citizen who publicly supported both gulf wars and contributes disproportionally to climate change, the above is an understatement of how I feel about the Syrian crisis.
Somewhat related, we have cities in the U.S. that are depressed in part because of population decline. An influx of immigrants could be mutually beneficial. The City of Detroit, for example, has no budget or incentive to demolish condemned homes because the cost of demolition exceeds the vacant land value. A refugee could be granted two homes on the promise they demolish one home. Perhaps one livable home can be constructed from reclaimed materials of the two.
Last I checked, it cost $10k to demolish a small home and a barely livable COD home costs around $5k. Receiving $10k in property for delivering a $10k service doesn't seem like a handout.
Granted refugees require support and resources beyond housing but this inspirational article on Jim Estill and his team of volunteers offer much encouragement in this regard.
edit: grammar
Regardless of the beneficiary, how to these people otherwise live. Where do they work and go to school? What do they eat?
More realistically, the local poor would just move from A to B with no improvement. People fleeing warzones have different backgrounds and incentives.
I agree on the general-welfare issue, but a lot of these refugees have very low expectations.
Maybe because of the fact we have 2 official languages, are so spread out with various ethnic enclaves, our immigrant roots show a little more. Our culture has never been close to homogeneous.
The show described amazing combinations of cultures Inuit-Korean or Greek-Jamaican or Mexican-Tibetan plus the mix of religions and food too.
Wild stuff. It's pretty much common place in central Canada big cities it's just really getting rolling here in my region. Chinese, Lebanese (100 year history here), Russians, the usual Scottish Irish British Dutch Native.
If we truly wanted to help these people and make a difference then the best thing we can do is provide local refugee camps with the resources to take care of their greatest needs. They know much better than we ever could what is needed. Hell, we can't even communicate with many of them, as many don't speak English and we have far too little translators.
And meanwhile we need to actually tackle many of the root problems of why we're in this hole mess to begin with. Solving many of those are hard, others not so much. For example, could we please stop selling those countries weapons to kill themselves with?
But as Wolf Blitzer so astutely pointed out on CNN, that would deeply impact the bottom line of America's 'defense' contractors!
We have frequently shifting national moods so why is it a surprise our foreign policy behaves as if it has a multiple personality disorder? If one was a cynic they might suggest this was a subversive policy for one system to cause systemic instability outside of its borders.
A lot of people have this notion that welcoming (muslim) immigrants is like asking for terrorism, that they take away jobs, that they don't integrate well into society and they are out to convert everyone to Islam or something like that.
I don't know what makes believe these crazy ideas, but the media certainly doesn't help, painting every terrorist attack as something to do with immigration policy or muslims. Social media plays a major role in spreading all these wrong stories. Unfortunately the vast majority of internet users get their news from social media platforms, where emotional appeal of a story trumps facts, which is something fake news writers have exploited to great success.
I have no idea how people can support policies which actively want to stop helping immigrants. It's a humanitarian crisis and we need to do everything to help people who are suffering. As simple as that.
A lot of people have this notion that welcoming (muslim) immigrants is like asking for terrorism, that they take away jobs, that they don't integrate well into society and they are out to convert everyone to Islam or something like that."
I don't care for parts of that comment. There are a lot of people in Canada that need help, and the notion that many people hold that you should help your countrymen before others, while somewhat heartless, absolutely is not "crazy" or necessarily xenophobic.
> the vast majority of internet users get their news from social media platforms, where emotional appeal of a story trumps facts, which is something fake news writers have exploited to great success
Indeed.
By the way, I thought this was a great, heartwarming, inspirational story and would like to see more like it, but saying anyone who disagrees with this approach is necessarily a racist or xenophobe, is incorrect.
No, it's not crazy or xenophobic. But it's interesting, because from a philosophical standpoint: what difference does it make? Why should you really help someone who lives down the street from you over someone 10 miles away? Why someone 30 miles away over someone 300 miles away? Because circumstance led you to randomly live near them?
Of course, the real answer is that it's hard to take in more people without externalities (like more splitting of funding, etc.). But the notion of helping your countrymen before non-countrymen on principle seems foolish and insular to me. People have feelings and desires whether they're born in the US or Canada or Iraq.
> helping your countrymen before non-countrymen on principle seems foolish and insular to me
is a bit insular =).
If you travel a bit around the world, having pride in your country, or camaraderie with your countrymen isn't that unusual a viewpoint. In fact, your view-point is a bit unusual (although that doesn't necessarily make it wrong). Many people will put their own country/tribe/family before strangers.
I'm probably the other side of the coin to you. To me, the next step is treating your country as nothing more than a business-transaction - I pay taxes, you give me services. I don't like that viewpoint.
Having a sense of civic pride - in a shared culture of history with those around you - can lead to many selfless things, and binds people together. Of course, taken too far, you get jingoism - but to my mind, there is a happy middle-ground.
>To me, the next step is treating your country as nothing more than a business-transaction - I pay taxes, you give me services. I don't like that viewpoint.
I guess that's my ideal world. I think that's where we're all inevitably moving, though it'll be slow.
Maybe because you've been through hardships together, maybe your neighbors ancestors owe yours a tremendous debt of gratitude, numerous reasons that I doubt refugees from most anywhere in the world would find difficult to understand.
Also, this thing called war used to affect us in the west, where the comfortable living of the last 70 odd years seems to have completely wiped any memories from the earlier difficult periods from our collective consciousness. The very idea of forming tightly knit bonds with your neighbors, and saving in times of plenty for the inevitable times of hardship that lie down the road, is now considered not just passe, but foolish.
Maybe, but that's a special exception. Usually this is not the case.
>maybe your neighbors ancestors owe yours a tremendous debt of gratitude
Who cares about ancestors? If my ancestor was a murderer, do I have to honor his legacy? I couldn't care less what my ancestors did, unless I've interacted with them while they were still alive.
As for war: that's the one big exception. Of course nationalism is required during war. But the West is not currently in a state of war.
Almost everyone.
Of course, I know it's different in many non-Western cultures.
Because it's more efficient. Because you're more likely to be able to effectively communicate and interact with a neighbor than with someone from across the world. Because of self-interest: helping your neighbor is in part helping yourself.
Like, I grew up here, but the extreme individualism in America seems weird and unhealthy to me. People instinctually work for their family, friends, and tribe first, and we should harness that instinct for good rather than trying to just suppress it.
So if your idea of charity is selflessly giving money, local is not the place to look. But it's rather abstract and you don't build relationships that way.
But you are right, charity doesn't have to purely selfless; it can also be about building the local community.
It is not some majestic yet universal coincidence that people have more in common with those who happen to share the same genes, and less so the more divergence exists.
>It is not some majestic yet universal coincidence that people have more in common with those who happen to share the same genes, and less so the more divergence exists.
It is the definition of a coincidence. The confounding variables being the shared area, culture, and socioeconomic tier in which you're born.
Probably because there is some truth in there. If you have any Muslim friend just ask them if they believe in freedom of speech and expression, few will say yes then ask them, should making fun of Mohammad be allowed, they will say no.
Every American Muslim I have met believes in the 1st Amendment.
Perhaps more than many Americans, American Muslims are acutely aware of how our laws keep them safe. Reducing these laws would make them more of a target then they already are.
Did you also ask them my follow up question, if making fun of Mohammad is allowed. I guarantee you almost all of them will say no.
To be fair, he did give a good deal of jobs to these people at his warehouse. Jobs that would have otherwise gone to locals. I know this, because I used to have one of those jobs and still have a number of friends that work there. Whether or not those jobs deserved to be for someone local or not, I can't say, but it's disingenuous to label people xenophobes for having legitimate concerns about how they, and their community, will continue to provide for their loved ones as jobs/livelihoods are given away to people from outside their communities (especially in a region that was hit pretty hard by the auto-industry issues of recent years).
Some interesting statistics can be found here, though the video is pretty one-sided: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPvnFDDQHk (From a real Muslim woman, not just a concern troll.)
Of course this doesn't mean immigrants should not be accepted with humanitarian rights and love like anyone else.
Right now countries just pick and choose what to do with refugees in conflicts that, often, they helped exacerbate.
If this convention existed back in the early 20th century then many Jews would have been saved from the Holocaust, there would be no stateless Palestinians today, and so forth.
As it is, I find it frustrating that the question isn't dealt with seriously: "why do so few Arab countries give asylum and citizenship to Arab refugees?" Lebanon did it, with Syrian refugees. Jordan did it with Palestinian refugees. But by and large, Arab countries don't help fellow Arab refugees.
What makes you Arab? Speaking Arabic and sharing a common culture. Russia would have taken in Russian refugees. It is one of their "five points". They even annexed Crimea and gave everyone there Russian citizenship.
Speaking the same language means you can integrate into societ FAR more quickly, get a job and support your family. It is also better for the country as skilled workers can become productive faster.
But it seems that international pressure must be applied to make Arab countries take in Arab refugees at a far greater rate than European countries with totally different culture.
EDIT:
According to this, a similarly named convention exists, but does not require countries to TAKE the refugees. And most Arab countries are not even signatories to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_S...
So as a result getting the real figures is a complete clusterfuck, with Arab governments claiming some numbers and stretching the definitions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrians_in_Saudi_Arabia
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Is there a criteria or policy you follow?
I used to be a Creationist, how the political ideology of Progression thinks about biology is very similar to how Creationists have thought about biological evolution down through the last two centuries.
While both camps see each other as being extraordinarily different, this is not compelling evidence that they aren't related, note the conflict between Shia and Sunni. They see each as being oppositional... Similarly Progressivism and Creationism come from the same source. If you trace back the history of ideas to ye olde England and Germany this becomes startlingly obvious. It is not a coincidence that the phrase 'social justice' is Catholic in origin.
Why this matters is that when Darwin set off his Atom Bomb concerning the Origin of Species, he immediately ran into direct conflict with the Church because the implications of evolution theory contradicted the account of life being formed in Genesis.
Today Darwin's ideas have won out over Christianity. Most Christians believe in evolution theory, and they take the first book of the Bible as not being a literal account of reality. In my opinion this ultimately neutered the political legitimacy of Christianity.
However a descendant of Christianity, Progressivism, continues to not believe in Evolution. Unlike Christianity, it has managed to exert enormous political influence through the education system, especially the universities. It is what has tabooed discussion of human speciation.
This is less than obvious because most students would initially deny that they disbelieve Evolution theory. Then, as it moves further up against their taboos, red lights begin to flash and they begin exhibiting failures of imagination.
There are students that;
- Believe evolution explains the animal/plant kingdoms but not that of humans "there hasn't been enough time for human evolution" (christian variant: humans are special).
- Believe evolution explains human evolution in the past but not the present.
- Believe evolution explains human evolution below the neck only. Here the brain is immutable but obvious physiological changes are fine.
- Believe evolution explains the development of the human brain but insist that nonetheless human speciation is impossible (christian variant: 'microevolution' i.e. small changes up to a limit - The reason for the constrained scope is never explained, only assumed).
None of them want to acknowledge that if evolution is real then humans evolve, and if humans evolve, then logically there could be evidence for different groups of humans. If such evidence existed for the beginning of human speciation the strongest evidence would be found in human population groups which have been separated for the longest period of time e.g. 100,000 years.
As you know science is very dependent on the ability to replicate experiments and make predictions. This is why in universities in the West, this subject is so tabooed there are few scientists willing to stick their necks out by doing those experiments. One of the men who discovered DNA, James Watson, is blacklisted because of some off the cuff remarks about race. If a bollocking can happen to somebody who made one of the most important discoveries in biology, it can sure happen to a less prestigious scientist. It is a tabooed subject because Progressivism is founded on theological roots i.e. the premise of their beliefs was never rational to begin with. The Chinese, who have no such taboo, Christian or Progressive, are making huge strides in biological science because the Progressivism meme is not strong in China.
This documentary 'DNA Dreams' is worth watching to fully appreciate this.