Wednesday, December 30, 2015

REFUGEE ORPHANS?? WHO'S HELPING??-BEST QUOTE OF 2015 from UN : “It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres in June. 2014








QUOTE OF 2015:  “It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres in June.


http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/12/24/immigration-minister-explains-why-canada-cant-accept-syrian-orphans
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IMMIGRATION MINISTER EXPLAINS WHY CANADA CANNOT ACCEPT SYRIAN ORPHANS....


Up to two million Syrian and Iraqi children have been orphaned by war as of Christmas 2015, having lost one or both parents to air raids, massacres, or from street fighting.




Children adrift




By Fram Dinshaw | December 24th 2015


Syrian orphans tell us their tragic stories

Syrian orphans interviewed by Al Jazeera.

Up to two million Syrian and Iraqi children have been orphaned by war as of Christmas 2015, having lost one or both parents to air raids, massacres, or from street fighting.

But war orphans will not specifically be included in the 25,000 Syrian war refugees whom the government aims to bring to Canada by Feb. 29 next year. Instead, Ottawa is focusing primarily on resettling whole families – parents and children – as well as vulnerable people such as LGBTQ Syrians.

“There are legal and other issues with orphans, which makes it more complex. Undoubtedly, it’d take more time – and time is one thing we don’t have very much of given our targets, so we are not focusing on orphans,” Immigration Minister John McCallum told National Observer on Dec. 23 in Ottawa.
Immigration minister John McCallum provides an update on refugees on Dec. 23 in Ottawa. (CP).

An Oct. 2007 parliamentary report warns that even identifying orphans and unaccompanied minors in need of protection can be problematic. For example, if children are forced to flee in haste from bombing raids or terror attacks, they may not carry proper documentation or proof of age.

Any refugee orphan wishing to enter Canada must provide both documentary evidence and testimony to a Canadian immigration official. If a claimant cannot convince an immigration officer that he or she is a minor, they will be treated like an adult refugee.

Orphans and otherwise parentless minors who make it to Canada and are interviewed by the Immigration and Refugee Board must be accompanied by a designated representative. This person can be a trusted friend or professional such as a social worker or lawyer.

However, even those minors who are granted refugee status in Canada cannot include parents or other family members on their application, assuming that their parents are still alive.

Once in Canada, younger refugee children under 16 typically live with foster parents, while older minors are sent to group homes, according to CBC.

“This situation is very difficult for children, and can lead to psychological problems, depression, or feelings of guilt. The exclusion of family members is justified as a means to prevent families from using their children as an anchor to secure their own resettlement. Parents of children accepted as refugees in Canada can submit a humanitarian and compassionate application to try to be resettled with their children,” states the report.

Six years later in 2013 – by which time the war in Syria was in full swing – CBC News reported that 300 unaccompanied minors were seeking refugee status in Canada every year. While some may well have lost one or both parents, others were children sent away by their parents in hopes that they would have a better life elsewhere.

Such was the case with Iraqi citizen Ahmed Mohammed, whose parents paid $20,000 to ‘agents’ to spirit him away to Canada just over two years ago, bypassing official refugee channels.


Chapter 1


Canadian policy



Kindertransport: A Journey to Life (2012) - Newsnight
BBC Newsnight documentary on the Kindertransports to Britain.

Nonetheless, there is an eighty-year old historical precedent for helping orphans and unaccompanied refugees fleeing violence. In 1938-39, nearly 10,000 Jewish children left Nazi Germany for the safety of Britain in ‘Kindertransports’.

The Kindertransport story began in fall 1938 when Nazi storm troopers smashed and looted Jewish-owned shops and houses, beating up and in a few cases killing anyone who got in their way. The nationwide pogrom became known as Kristallnacht – Night of Broken Glass. It prompted the British government to ease its hitherto-strict refugee policies by allowing unaccompanied refugee children under age 17 to enter the United Kingdom on Kindertransport trains.

However, the children were only issued temporary visas and were supposed to leave Britain once the German crisis was over. It was up to private citizens to sponsor refugee children and guarantee payments for their care, education, and eventual departure from Britain.

Parents were barred from accompanying their children to Britain and in many cases were unable to support their children at all as they had already been imprisoned in concentration camps. Jewish associations organizing Kindertransports gave priority to orphans and homeless children.

All told, nearly 10,000 refugee children – of whom 7,500 were Jews – reached the safety of Britain by September 1939, when the outbreak of World War II prevented any further passage of refugees out of Nazi Germany.

Not all refugee children were orphans when they left Germany in the late 1930s. But by the time World War II ended in 1945, nearly all of them were, as their parents were among the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

Nor did the Kindertransport children return to their former homes in Germany, Austria, or Czechoslovakia as planned. Instead, they either remained in Britain and took UK citizenship, or emigrated to Israel and the United States after the war ended.

Like Syrians in 2015, most surviving European Jews had no homes or families to return to, as Europe in 1945 had been devastated by both fighting and genocide, their homes and possessions confiscated, or bombed.

Eight decades later, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has identified 130,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan who require permanent refuge in other countries. This category includes orphans and those who have been tortured by Syrian government or rebel forces.

Canada has so far agreed to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees, a number that will likely rise to between 35,000 – 50,000 refugees by the end of 2016, according to Immigration Minister John McCallum.

“They’ve all come under the UNHCR definition of vulnerable people so that’s a single crucial criterion and within that, our group will be largely made up of families,” said McCallum.

But the Canadian government is not arranging any Kindertransport for Syrian children.

“The short answer to that is no,” said McCallum.

But children – whether orphans or not – continue to bear the brunt of warfare in conflict zones around the world.


Chapter 2


What's at stake

Syrian Children - Refugee Camp Niroz | UNICEF


Syrian children at Niroz Refugee Camp share their experiences.

United Nations figures show that 15 conflicts have erupted or re-ignited in the past five years. These include the Middle East hotspots of Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as ongoing fighting in parts of Ukraine, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan. Eight more wars are currently ongoing in the African nations of Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Mali, northern Nigeria, South Sudan, and Burundi.

These wars had produced a combined total of 59.5 million refugees as of June 2015. More than half of them are children.

There is no exact figure for how many children have been orphaned by conflict worldwide, but SOS Children and the United Nations estimate that 153 million children have lost either one or both parents from war, disease, or other causes.

“It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres in June.
A father cradles his dead child in Syria. (AP).

As war spreads across the world, so does trauma for those children caught up in it. The New Yorker interviewed Nelson Kargbo, a boy from Sierra Leone, who was already an orphan when his village was attacked. He witnessed his best friend’s shot to death after resisting a rebel fighter who groped her breasts. Both Kargbo and his friend were forcibly recruited as child soldiers.

He later fell sick and was abandoned on a roadside by his rebel outfit. After making his way to a refugee camp in neighbouring Guinea, Kargbo arrived in the United States as a 15-year-old refugee with his surviving family.

But like many who witness the reality of war – both soldiers and civilians – the trauma continued.

“I just tried to rehabilitate myself by doing what my friends were doing, smoking weed and drinking,” Kargbo told the New Yorker.

Unable to escape nightmares, voices in his head, or trouble with the law for a series of minor offences, Kargbo was detained by immigration officials and faced deportation back to Sierra Leone. He eventually won his appeal and was allowed to stay, but by then he was diagnosed with psychosis.

“Children are exposed to situations of terror and horror during war – experiences that may leave enduring impacts in posttraumatic stress disorder. Severe losses and disruptions in their lives lead to high rates of depression and anxiety in war-affected children. These impacts may be prolonged by exposures to further privations and violence in refugee situations,” states a Dec. 2006 Croat Medical Journal report by Joanna Santa Barbara.

In addition, war can force children to alter their entire morality, as the experience of oppression or indifference to suffering destroys their emotional ‘place’ in the world.

“They may have to change their moral structure and lie, steal, and sell sex to survive. They may have their moral structure forcibly dismantled and replaced in training to kill as part of a military force,” states Santa Barbara’s report.

However, Canada is stepping up to help traumatized children by reinstating federal healthcare for refugees, a program that was eliminated by the former Conservative government.

“These refugees in most cases come from desperately awful, unimaginable circumstances. Some of them will bear their scars of that, both in terms of physical health and mental health and so that’s one of the reasons we at the federal level reinstated the interim federal healthcare program for refugees,” McCallum told National Observer.

Initially, the restored benefits will be available to Syrians only, but McCallum indicated that they would be expanded to other refugees soon.

But McCallum said that refugee health care remained primarily a provincial responsibility, as it did for all other Canadians.

“We are working closely with our provincial counterparts,” McCallum said.


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NO COUNTRY FOR YOUNG MEN- ONE REFUGEE'S STORY OF GETTING TO CANADA...

Prelude to catastrophe



Kalashnikov-toting gunmen rampaged through the dusty, bullet-scarred streets, looting, raping and killing anyone who stood in their path, as Somalia ripped itself apart in a storm of bloodshed.



The year was 1992, and eight-year old Sharmarke Mohamed could only look on in horror as his country collapsed around him.



Nineteen years before the horrors of civil war engulfed Syria, Mohamed was too young to fully understand a catastrophe that claimed the lives of neighbours and schoolmates seemingly without rhyme or reason.



“I remember that everyone would sleep with fear of not knowing what would happen tomorrow to you, your family, and not having protection or anywhere where you could receive safe haven,” said Mohamed.

Sharmarke Mohamed, as seen on his Twitter profile photo.



What had actually happened was that rebel forces had toppled Somalia’s hated military dictator Siad Barre in 1991, triggering a civil war that plunged the country into anarchy. Rival warlords and their militias battled it out for control of the capital Mogadishu and other cities. Law and order broke down completely and the police simply ran away— leaving Somali civilians at the mercy of armed thugs who imposed their own rules at gunpoint.

Somalia's capital Mogadishu, left ruined by warfare in the 1990s. (Wikimedia).



Young Mohamed didn't understand politics then. All he knew for sure was that he was terrified – and that he had to escape Somalia if he wanted to stay alive.



Somalia’s crisis was a foretaste of another looming catastrophe. Twenty years after Barre was driven out of office, an even bloodier civil war destroyed Syria and drove half its population from their homes.



As in Somalia, the war began when Syria’s people revolted against the often-brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. The demonstrations escalated into a bloodbath as the regime clamped down, triggering a full-scale armed rebellion.



Just as his own country’s civil war was a prelude to the Syrian cataclysm, Mohamed’s journey to freedom prefigured that of millions of Syrians, including young men and boys just like him.





Slow boats to Kenya



For Mohamed, the only way out of Somalia was a dangerous boat trip down the East African coast to Kenya in a rickety vessel. Many boats sank, drowning refugees in the Indian Ocean. The lucky ones made it to Mombasa, a port city on the Kenyan coast.



“The Somali BBC radio was announcing those boats that were lost,” recalled Mohamed.



But there was no image of a Somali Alan Kurdi—or the ubiquity of Internet-based digital images—to galvanize public opinion and help refugees like Mohamed.



Instead, Mohamed’s only reward was a Kenyan refugee camp, where the boy would spend the next five years. He did not disclose whether he made it out of Somalia with his family, or was forced to flee by himself, one child among thousands.



“I don’t want to answer that question,” Mohamed told National Observer in a reluctant tone.



His ordeal was such a whirlwind that over two decades later, he isn’t sure whether the memories are all his own or if he was recalling what surviving relatives told him about Somalia.



What is certain is that the war forced him to abandon his education.



“I was a child. I wasn’t able to go to school, so I missed all my schooling,” said Mohamed.





Chapter 1





Arab Spring, refugee winter

Scroll down to continue

Egypt: Battle for Tahrir Square





Footage showing riots and street battles in Cairo during the 2011 revolution against former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. (Credit: Daily News Egypt via YouTube).



The next stop for Mohamed – still only a boy – was Ethiopia and later Egypt, where he settled for a time in the capital Cairo.



Cairo is the Arab world’s beating heart: streets lined with hulking apartment blocks and heaving with traffic, filled with dust and the noise of blaring car horns; a cityscape of traditional bazaars beneath swanky office towers and condos that wouldn't look out of place in Toronto or Vancouver.



It was there that Mohamed finally managed to complete his education, but as a refugee and foreign resident he had to pay for it out of his own pocket.



“You are considered as a foreigner,” recalled Mohamed.



Once he graduated university, he fell into the same black hole that traps refugees all over Egypt: as non-citizens, they are not legally allowed to work.



It was only thanks to the support of relatives that Mohamed managed to survive in Cairo.



In 2011, Mohamed once again bore witness to bloodshed on the streets of his adopted home. In January of that year, massive street protests against the autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak rocked Egypt, as Egyptians revolted against corruption, police brutality, and high prices.



Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo became the focal point for violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces, leaving many injured or killed— but the whole city descended into a chaos that for Mohamed was eerily reminiscent of his Somalian childhood.



The police melted away as local vigilantes took their place, arming themselves with bats and other crude weapons to defend their homes and shops against looters.



“The whole street system went down,” recalled Mohamed. “I remember there was no police. Everyone was protecting their own block. It reminded me all over again of Somalia.”

An Egyptian Army truck set ablaze by protestors in 2011. (Wikimedia).



As Mubarak’s regime collapsed and jubilant Egyptians took to the streets, the refugees in their midst were abandoned and afraid. International aid organizations evacuated their staff, said Mohamed, leaving no one to help people like him.



This was the Arab Spring, and Egypt was only one of several countries— including Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan and Syria— facing citizen uprisings. In March 2011, a group of Syrian teenagers spray-painted ‘The people want the fall of the regime’ on a wall in the town of Daraa. Security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad arrested and tortured them. Protestors subsequently took to the streets, demanding their release.



Within weeks, hundreds of thousands of Syrians mounted nationwide anti-regime protests, triggering a bloody crackdown by President Assad. This in turn sparked a full-scale civil war that has now claimed roughly 300,000 lives to date and left his country, heir to one of the world’s oldest civilizations, in ruins.



The war has also triggered the worst refugee crisis since World War II, as more than four million Syrians have fled the country and are fleeing in their thousands to Europe via Turkey. Some trek overland, smuggling themselves across borders. Yet others clamber into rickety boats and rafts, preferring the risk of drowning and an uncertain future to their present reality—just as Mohamed and his fellow Somalians did 23 years ago.



But as the Middle East was going up in flames, Mohamed's ship finally came in.





Chapter 2





Canadian Spring





In June 2012, Sharmarke Mohamed stepped off a plane in Winnipeg, ready to begin his new life in Canada. The boy who had fled Somalia in a boat two decades ago was now a grown man— albeit a single one without a wife or children—the type of individual the Canadian government is now singling out, as it resettles thousands of Syrian refugees, pushing unattached men to the back of the line.



Mohamed's lucky break came when he received family and community sponsorship in Canada. This allowed him to apply as a refugee, an application accepted by Canadian officials in Egypt.



For Mohamed, coming to Canada was “the biggest success” in his troubled life. For the first time, he felt truly free and safe.



“I was like, oh my God, life is starting now.”



But Winnipeg, a frigid prairie city a world away from Cairo’s heat and noise, did not keep Mohamed for long.



Instead, he kept moving west to Victoria, where he landed a job at the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society as a settlement worker, where he helps newcomers to Canada adjust to their new home.



His job focuses on helping immigrant and refugee youths to integrate into Canadian society. He assists new arrivals in navigating the school system, accessing needed services, and bringing teens together to share their experiences in supervised workshops.



When not helping his fellow immigrants – a job that he finds highly rewarding – Mohamed is a refugee advocate in Victoria, raising awareness of their plight with the general public. He also serves as an executive member at the Canadian Council of Refugees.



“I always say I got an arranged marriage to Victoria – because I got the job here. Who says arranged marriages can’t work?” joked Mohamed.



Mohamed's biography now reads as part of the canon of Canadian immigrant success stories—the young person who overcomes tremendous adversity to build a new life in a new home. He has whole-heartedly embraced Canada’s secular democratic values. His life is a rebuttal to those who claim that Muslim refugees will seek to impose Sharia religious law on Canadians.



In fact, Mohamed repeatedly professes his faith in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the civil rights legislation drawn up when Justin Trudeau’s father was still prime minister.



Unlike his life in Cairo—where he was banned from working and unable to integrate into, nor contribute to, Egyptian society in any meaningful way—the Charter allows Mohamed to live and work wherever he chooses and think freely, without fearing either government oppression or mob violence.



“I’m very happy, because the last three years I’ve worked so hard and I’m really committed to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and finally I feel that I’m at home. I’m so happy that I have a job, I pay my taxes,” said Mohamed.





Chapter 3

Who makes an ideal refugee?







Syrian refugees hope to be selected by Canada

Syrian refugees hope to be selected by Canada. (Source: CBC).



Three years after Mohamed stepped off a plane in Winnipeg, the Canadian government is preparing to welcome 25,000 Syrian war refugees to a new life in Canada.



The refugee issue has become a political minefield for Justin Trudeau’s government after Islamic State terrorists massacred 129 people in Paris on Nov. 13, bringing public fears over border security and refugees to the forefront.



On Nov. 24, Liberal ministers announced that the government will miss its original Dec. 31 deadline for bringing all 25,000 Syrians to Canada, extending the timeline into 2016.



Trudeau's team is walking a political tightrope between compassion and national security. Its solution, announced on Nov. 24, is to prioritize whole families, members of Syria’s much-persecuted LGBTQ community, and women deemed vulnerable to rape or sexual exploitation for government refugee sponsorship.



This means that young single men like Mohamed are being shunted to the back of the queue.



While Mohamed welcomed Trudeau’s overall refugee plan, he was dismayed at Canada's approach to single men like himself.



“I was a single Muslim man. Just to think that I would be rejected is heartbreaking, knowing how committed I am to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and how much I’m committed to my community [in Victoria],” said Mohamed.



Contrary to some media reports, single unattached men who do not identify as LGBTQ are not being shut out completely, but rather restricted to private sponsorship only. Of the 25,000 people the government plans to admit, 10,000 private sponsorship slots will be available. Private individuals or groups seeking to sponsor Syrians are free to choose whomever they like.



Nonetheless, the New Democrat Party wasted no time in criticizing the Liberal approach to single Syrian males seeking asylum.



“After promising to accept refugees based on need, Liberals are continuing the practice of picking and choosing refugees,” said NDP Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship critic Jenny Kwan on Nov. 24.





Chapter 4





Lone men



Who is fighting whom in Syria? BBC News

Who is fighting whom in Syria? (BBC News via YouTube).



Single Syrian men are arguably as at-risk as any other group. Any men of fighting age residing in government-held territory are liable to be forcibly conscripted into President al-Assad’s army and serve a regime that has presided over hundreds of thousands of deaths since the civil war erupted in 2011.



The situation is no better for men living in rebel-held areas of Syria, as they too face possible conscription into extremist jihadi groups such as Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra, which is affiliated with terrorist group al-Qaeda.



“I’m a peaceful man and I don’t want to fight," a refugee called Nizam told the UK Guardian after he fled his own country. "The government is against us – and ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra [two of the main jihadi groups] want to kill us.”

Map of the Syrian Civil War as of Nov. 25 2015. (Wikimedia).



For those Syrians unwilling to fight and unable to legally claim asylum in the West, their only other choice is fleeing to crowded refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon, or heading north into Turkey.



For many, these countries are merely a stepping stone. Every week, thousands make the same choice that Sharmarke Mohamed made 23 years ago: clambering into an overcrowded boat or dinghy and sailing across the Mediterranean Sea to Greece.



Those who make it to dry land, either on Greece's mainland or its islands, are only at the beginning of their trials. They may be lucky enough to receive hot food or medical care at an aid station, but then they are faced with a hazardous overland trek through Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary towards Western Europe.



However, European nations overwhelmed by a tide of desperate people are steadily closing their borders. Hungary has already thrown up a 108-mile fence on its frontier with Serbia, while Germany and Austria have reinstated border controls. Poland is refusing to take any new arrivals since the Paris attacks.







Chapter 5







Canadian dream or security nightmare?





Most of the current flood of refugees – hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children – that have entered Europe have done so illegally and have not been subjected security screening.



This has caused nightmares in European capitals from London to Budapest, as governments fear that terrorists could pose as refugees to infiltrate Europe and potentially cause chaos.



After the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, the public mood turned hysterical when a Syrian passport was found near the corpse of a slain Islamic State terrorist.



Of the eight terrorists who attacked Paris, seven have been positively identified as citizens of either France or Belgium and were not refugees, according to a Nov. 19 International Business Times report. The eighth attacker who carried the Syrian passport has not yet been identified.



However, even if terrorists did pose as refugees, Canada would be a much harder target to reach than mainland Europe. The country is protected by two huge oceans and a polar icecap that no leaky refugee boat could ever cross. The only land route is via the U.S.A, which enforces tough visa and security screening rules at border checkpoints.



This leaves air travel as the only way to reach Canada, and all 25,000 Syrians arriving here will be thoroughly screened.



After refugees are identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), they must undergo an iris scan at a UN office to verify their identity. Next, Canadian officials will collect biometric and biographical information from refugee candidates as well as digital photos. Their personal information will be checked against security, law enforcement, and immigration databases to weed out lawbreakers, before any refugee receives a permanent resident visa.



Lastly, Canadian Border Services Agency officers will confirm the identities of each individual refugee before they board their planes to Canada. Upon arrival at the Toronto or Montreal airports, CBSA officials will again verify refugees’ identities one final time before they are allowed onto Canadian soil.



"We are ready to welcome those people who have suffered so much," said Minister of Health Jane Philpott, who also chairs the government's Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees.



Three years earlier, Sharmarke Mohamed also had to undergo security screening. This meant submitting his fingerprints to both the Egyptian and Canadian authorities.



He had a full interview with Canadian visa officers in Cairo and also had to apply for permission from the Egyptian government to leave.







Chapter 6



Plane scared – or plane sense?





Immediately after the Paris attacks, the CBSA stepped up screening of foreign travellers landing at Canadian airports, pulling aside passengers as soon as they stepped off the plane to ask why they were visiting Canada.



National Observer spoke with two travellers at Ottawa Airport on Nov. 19 who had just arrived on a flight from London-Heathrow. Both confirmed that CBSA agents were questioning foreign nationals at the airplane door.



However, the policy appeared to cover all non-Canadians, not just those from the Middle East. British tourist Rebecca Jobson said that agents asked her why she was visiting Canada and if she had been to Africa within the past 21 days.



Neither Jobson nor Ted Blake, a Canadian citizen who was also on the flight from London, were especially bothered by what they had seen.



“They were doing what they should be doing,” said Blake of the CBSA. He was waved straight through by officers.



But the plane-side screening appeared to be temporary. A few days later on Nov. 23, Torontonian Anjeer Khan landed at Pearson after a trip abroad and said that no border guards were present at the airplane door after his flight landed.



A senior CBSA official who cannot be named informed National Observer that the agency regularly monitored disembarkation at aircraft, saying it was a normal process unrelated to the global refugee crisis.



CBSA spokesperson Line Guibert-Wolff also had little to say when asked about extra screening of international travellers at airports.



“The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) exercises vigilance every day and works closely with its security partners, both in Canada and internationally, to ensure the safety and security of Canada and Canadians. CBSA operational requirements may require that traveller documents be reviewed,” Guibert-Wolff said.



While the CBSA remains tight-lipped over airport screening procedures, the opposition Conservatives have voiced fears over Canada’s ability to cope with thousands of new arrivals.



Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel said that CBSA officers “hadn’t been briefed at all,” on the government’s screening plans. For her this was worrying as they all had questions about training and their ability to properly screen a huge number of refugees at airports.



“What we're concerned about in our role is to ensure that the safety of Canadians is put first and foremost, in any plan to enable refugees to be welcomed to Canada,” Rempel told National Observer.



However the CBSA – together with the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service – was promised $100 million in extra funding under the previous Conservative government back in May. Then-finance minister Joe Oliver said that it would help protect Canada from terrorists.



Border guards are already under strain as they prepare for the possible return home of Canadian extremists fighting for the Islamic State and other jihadi groups, according to the National Post. An estimated 130 Canadians are fighting with extremist groups abroad and another 80 or so have already returned.

Back to National Observer





    Intro

    Chapter 1Arab Spring, refugee winter

    Chapter 2Canadian Spring

    Chapter 3Who makes an ideal refugee?

    Chapter 4Lone men

    Chapter 5Canadian dream or security nightmare?

    Chapter 6Plane scared – or plane sense?



Other stories



    This is what a climate refugee looks like






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AND SOME OF THE GOOD STUFF.... FROM NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA...  this is so heartwarming from an old Immigraton worker from long ago....

In case you missed it....highlights and happenings from the South Shore Breaker.

A new year and a new home


South Sudanese family arrives in Barrington


KATHY JOHNSON


It's a new year and new life for a family of 10 from South Sudan who have been living in the Dadaab Refugee Camp in eastern Kenya for the past 12 years.

It was almost midnight on Dec. 7 when Johnson Majok Akay, his wife Angelina, mother-in-law Rebecca and seven children; Monica, Priscilla, Michael, Susan, Lillian, Faith and Samson arrived at the house in Barrington that had been lovingly prepared for them by the Barrington Area Refugee Sponsorship Group.

After 75 hours of travel including an all-day bus ride and four flights, they were exhausted to say the least.

‟Everything is new and different for them," said group member John Shaar a few days after they arrived. ‟The easiest way to describe the situation for them after a couple days is bewilderment.

They are happy to be here and ready to start their new life, but everything is new for them, and I mean everything. It's going to be a big learning curve." Shaar said sponsorship group members have ‟been awesome with their time and support," and ‟the community hospitality and generosity continues to be amazing. Before and since the Sudanese family arrived here, the offers of help and gifts haven't stopped." The family has wasted no time in putting down new roots. The children started school at Forest Ridge Academy and Barrington Municipal High School on Dec. 14 and were anxious for classes to resume after the Christmas Break. Shaar's wife Sandra said while the family knows that here in rural Nova Scotia there isn't as many job opportunities, postsecondary training and other amenities as in a city, ‟the dad said he feels we care about them as much as his Sudanese family does, he knows his children are safe and he is happy with the schools they will be attending. He knows they now all have a future." The family has landed immigrant status.

The Barrington Area Refugee Sponsorship group was formed last summer, and is just one of many groups along the South Shore who are in various stages of sponsoring refugee families.

‟There's (an estimated) 13 groups and each group is sponsoring at least one family," said John Mac-Donald, chairman of two Bridgewater area groups, and President of Bridgewater Inter-church Council.

MacDonald, who is spokesperson for the Lunenburg County groups, said he's ‟been inspired by the expressions of good will" to the cause. ‟There are so many people who want to help and we want to give them the opportunity to do so," he said. ‟Just at my church (St. Joseph), we raised $20,000 at one special offering and we're not that big a parish," he said, adding they are now looking at sponsoring another family.

MacDonald said he didn't know when the family of four being sponsored by St. Josephs would be arriving. Syrian refugees, the family includes young parents and two daughters ages six and eight.

While the various sponsorship groups along the south shore are all at various stages of fundraising, they will all welcome any support they can get, said Mac-Donald. ‟I know a lot of people want to help," he said. ‟The bottom line is we want to make this a welcoming community so even if your contribution is a smile, let's all be as welcoming in any way we can." MacDonald has compiled a list of refugee sponsorship groups on the south shore ‟for any who may wish to make a financial contribution."Bridgewater & Area Syrian Refugee Sponsorship Committee (Cheques made out to BASRSC), Box 257, 450 Lahave St. Bridgewater, N.S. B4V4A3St. Joseph's Syrian Refugee Sponsorship Committee (Cheques made out to St. Joseph's Church,
Refugee Fund on ‟memo" line) 123 Pleasant St. Bridgewater, N.S.

B4V1N3Mahone Bay Area Refugee Sponsorship Group (Cheques made out to St. James' Parish, Mahone Bay, Refugee Sponsorship on memo line), P.O. Box 25 Mahone Bay, N.S. B0J 2E0Lunenburg & Area Refugee Committee (LARC) (Cheques made out to St. John's Anglican Church OR Rotary Club of Lunenburg, memo line: FOR LARC), St.

John's Anglican Church, 64 Townsend Street., P.O. Box 238, Lunenburg, NS B0J 2C0 Donations also accepted online at: www.larcsyria.weebly.comLunenburg Friends 1 and Lunenburg Friends 2 (Cheques made out to Lunenburg Friends), c/o Fern Jordan, 155 Second Peninsula Road, RR 3, Lunenburg, NS B0J 2C0St. Norbert's Syrian Refugee Sponsorship Committee (Cheques made out to St. Joseph's Church, St. Norbert's Refugee Fund on memo line), 123 Pleasant St., Bridgewater, N.S., B4V1N3LaHave Area Refugee Support Group (Cheque made out to Wesley United Church, refugee support on the memo line), Wesley United Church, 22 Drews' Hill Rd., Petite Rivire, NS. B4V 5Z8Two Rivers Refugee Group, c/o Doug Quinn, 184 Pentz Rd., RR#1 Pleasantville, N.S. B0R1G0Yarmouth Refugee Support Group http://herald.ca/YYM





Johnson Majok Akay, left, is all smiles after arriving at his new home in Barrington on Dec. 7, as is John Shaar, one of the many driving forces in the Barrington and Area Refugee Sponsorship Group. KATHY JOHNSON



Angelina Akay, left. with Barrington and Area Refugee Sponsorship Group volunteer Sandra Shaar after arriving at her new home in Barrington on Dec. 7. The family of 10 includes seven children ages 17 to nine months. KATHY JOHNSON



Barrington and Area Refugee Sponsorship Group volunteer Harry MacDonald carries in a piece of luggage for the Sundanese family now loving in Barrington. KATHY JOHNSON


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What happens to orphan refugees in America?
Philadelphia refugee organization explains how U.S. takes in unaccompanied minors
By Sharon Lurye
PhillyVoice Staff
When asked in a recent interview whether he’d accepted Syrian orphans under the age of five to come to the United States as refugees, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said no.
“They have no family here. How are we going to care for these folks?” asked Christie, according to the Daily Caller.
Janet Panning is in a position to answer that question. She’s the program director at Philadelphia’s Lutheran Children and Family Service, which runs a refugee resettlement program in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State.
Her organization serves refugees of all nations and ethnicities, connecting them to jobs, housing and government assistance. It is also part of a larger network, the National Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, that helps unaccompanied refugee children find foster families.
“We’re always out there looking for people who are willing to be foster parents. … We always have people in the works,” she said.
NOT 'THE PEOPLE WE SEE ON TV'
First, Panning wanted to clear up a common misconception about refugees: they’re not the people you’ve seen on TV, getting shuttled from country to country in Europe. Refugees don’t get to step one foot inside the U.S. until they’ve gone through a multiyear screening process.
“What people perhaps don’t understand is that the people we see on TV that are fleeing into Europe are not the ones in line for a refugee interview,” Panning said. “The people who are getting refugee interviews are ones who fled during the Arab Spring to Lebanon or Jordan. That was in 2011 or 2012. So they’ve been sitting there in the refugee camps, undergoing levels of scrutiny (people) don’t even envision.”
Refugees who escape to another country register with the United Nations. Out of around four million Syrian refugees worldwide, the U.N. has so far submitted 22,427 of them to the U.S. for consideration. The United States, in turn, has accepted 2,174 Syrian refugees since 2012, the Guardian reported.
In comparison, the U.N. says there are around 1.8 million refugees in Turkey, 1.2 million in Lebanon and 600,000 in Jordan.
As PhillyVoice published before, refugee applicants go through a long vetting process, which includes an interview with the Department of Homeland Security, fingerprint checks and medical exams.
“Any inconsistencies in the stories are checked. If there’s any flag at all, people don’t travel,” Panning explained.
Once people are cleared for travel, they are matched with agencies like Lutheran Children and Family Service. So far, the organization has helped eight Syrian families, consisting of 39 people, resettle in the Lehigh Valley.
FINDING FOSTER FAMILIES
Both the Lutherans and the Catholics have national agencies with networks that provide foster care for unaccompanied minors. Once a child is identified, said Panning, “We scour our offices nationally to see who has a placement.”
The child does not come to the U.S. unless there is a family waiting for them already. Because of the chaos of war, however, these minors cannot be adopted.
“These children can never be adopted because it’s always possible their relatives or parents can turn up,” Panning said. In Pennsylvania, children can stay in foster care until age 18, or up to age 21 if they are in school or employed.
When a family comes to America, Lutheran Service picks them up from the airport and helps them find an apartment, make health appointments, find jobs and enroll their children in school.
The government gives Lutheran Services $1,125 per person for the first two months. Welfare benefits after that can include cash assistance, medical assistance and food stamps, but the exact amount depends on the composition of the family and how soon the adults can find a job. Panning says that 80 percent of the families are employed within the first six months.
Despite the debate over accepting Syrian refugees, Lutheran Services has received “an outpouring of support from multiple groups,” noted Panning, and not just fellow Lutherans. She even got an email from one person who wrote: “I’m an atheist; I just want to help.”
There are many ways to help: donating to the organization, co-sponsoring a family, volunteering as a tutor or packing a refugee welcome box. You can even become a foster parent, and become the family of a child who doesn't have one anymore. 



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WHY AREN'T THESE RIH


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'Orphan' refugees locked up in cells

15 October 2015 at 10:40am

The United Nations refugee agency has been forced to step in to save scores of “orphan” children from detention in filthy police cells on the Greek island of Kos after its complaints at the squalid conditions went unheeded.
Children as young as 11 who arrived by boat from Turkey without their parents or other adult relatives have been held for weeks at a time in cells smeared in faeces, alongside adult criminals, while Greek authorities determined where to relocate them.
Greek officials say they are obliged to keep the children securely for their own safety as legal minors.
But volunteers from a non-governmental organisation that visits prisoners at Kos's central police station every day said they were shocked by the “medieval” conditions there.
They are provided with only one meal a day, in addition to fresh fruit and water that is supplied by charities and aid agencies, and on at least one occasion children in police detention went for two days without food.
They are not allowed to go outside and are handcuffed if they are moved to a different location, several witnesses said.
“It's really filthy,” one volunteer, who asked not to be named, told The Independent.
“There are bare electrical wires sticking out of the ceiling … There is shit on the floor and it is running out of the cell. They have to reach out through bars to receive their food. This is not normal in Europe.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been warning the Greek government and local authorities about the poor conditions since it developed a presence on the island in May.
Hard-pressed Greek officials have been battling to cope with the influx of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants arriving by boat from Turkey, often at the rate of more than 1 000 a week.
Now the UN body has intervened, and has reached an agreement with Kos's public prosecutor that such children will in future be placed in the care of an NGO, which will run its own shelter for them with UN funding.
“Clearly [custody] remains a state responsibility. However, given the fact that is not happening at the speed needed for the numbers of refugees arriving in Greece, the UN has been happy to step in and help,” said Marco Procaccini, director of the UNHCR office on the island.
At present a total of 11 children aged between 12 and 17 are being held in two Kos police stations, The Independent has been told.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children are entitled to special protection and help if they are refugees and should not be placed in prison with adults.
While EU agreements lay out guidelines for the protection of unaccompanied minors, each country has its own specific legislation.
According to Greek law, those claiming asylum who cannot be matched up with relatives are automatically placed in the custody of the public prosecutor until they can be put under the supervision of a suitable legal guardian.
In practice, this means they are handed over to the police while they wait to be placed at a long-term care facility elsewhere in Greece.
This can take anything between a few days and several weeks, Mr Procaccini said.
Tim Ubhi, the clinical director of the British organisation Children's E-Hospital, who visited the police cell three times during a recent visit to help refugees on the island, said the conditions were very poor.
“It's a horrible cell,” he said.
“It's like a medieval dungeon - there's no other way to describe it.”
Mr Ubhi said that the conditions in which the children are held may have a devastating impact on them.
“From a physical and a psychological point of view, as well as emotionally, this is quite disturbing,” he said.
Since May the UNHCR has encouraged police to transfer some teenagers from Kos town police station to another, 12 miles outside, where they are incarcerated in a single room but are at least separate from other prisoners.
They remain locked in for most of the day.
“They don't let them out because they are under 18,” said Sevastianos Marangos, head of Kos's Civil Protection Office.
“We keep them there for their own safety.”
But others are still being held in the central police cell.
On Wednesday there were seven there, alongside more than a dozen adults.
“They are not looking good,” said a volunteer who had visited the cell several days in a row.
“You can see it in their eyes.”
Mr Marangos said Kos had been unprepared for the volume of refugees who began arriving in the spring.
He said the island, which has a population of 30 947, has not received enough funding or additional staff to meet the refugees' needs.
More than 42 000 have arrived on the island this year, with 337 in a single day last weekend.
“This problem was faced for the first time in Kos,” Mr Marangos said.
“We have tried the best we could to keep the island clean and safe.”
Stella Nanou, public information officer for UNHCR in Greece, said the practice of detaining children in police custody while they await transfer to longer-term care was being repeated in other parts of the country.
The UNHCR has repeatedly warned the government about its capacity to accommodate unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, most recently in April this year.
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