Canadians Drowning in An Unsustainable Flood of Immigration

"The rising volume of asylum claims, along with the longer duration of eligibility [under the Interim Federal Health Program] caused by extended determination times, has been an important growth driver in recent years [of steeply rising health costs in Canada]."

"[Resettled Gazans received $41 million in various benefits; the Interim Housing Assistance Program was given $400 million and $66.4 million was described as funding "temporary accommodations to asylum seekers." 

Parliamentary Budget Office report

 

"Rejected asylum claimants are now receiving better health care than many Canadians who have paid into a system their entire life."

"At a time when six million Canadians cannot find a family doctor and are waiting for care, it's unacceptable that bogus asylum seekers are receiving better health benefits than Canadians." 

MPs Dan Mazier/Michelle Rempel Garner, shadow ministers Health and Immigration 

A new report shows Ontario hospitals spent $9.2 billion on private, for-profit nursing and staffing agencies over the past decade, a figure that doubled between 2013 and 2023. Critics of private agencies urge Ontario to phase them out, calling them a ‘band-aid on a gaping wound.’ CBC

 

A new analysis by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports that it will cost Canadians a record $1-billion this year to pay for health-care premiums of refugee claimants, some of whom continue receiving free health care even while their claims have been rejected. Costs are ballooning as a result of an unprecedented number of foreign nations in Canada, representing a five-fold increase from  six years earlier when the cost totalled $211 million annually.

 

 

Looking ahead to the future, the cost projection reaching into 2030 sees $6.2 billion being laid out for refugee claimants' health care. Even asylum claimants whose refugee applications have been rejected can access the benefits of the Federal Health Program. The level of care being offered to refugee claimants surpasses that given to the average Canadian citizen where, in addition to hospital and surgical care, the IFHP covers dental care, vision care, pharmacare and other services not covered by general public health plans. 

 

This, at a time when hospitals are overwhelmed by a surge in demand on their services, when wait times for surgery lead to early deaths, amidst a shortage of doctors and nurses and hospital beds. A time when six million Canadians cannot access the services of a family practitioner.

 

The surge in both immigration/refugee/migrant levels into the country amounting to about an increase of a  third of the population falls between the period of 2015 to the present, a decade altogether where two Liberal-led governments in Canada have fuelled both a stupendous increase in the population and a concomitant increase in the cost of  welfare and all manner of social services, extending even to a higher cost of living for all Canadians where housing prices have soared.

 

Figures released by the Immigration and Refugee Board indicate 299,614 foreign nationals in Canada await their refugee claim results, representing over a 1,800 percent increase from the number -- 16,048 --  in Canada when the Trudeau Liberals took office in 2015. Tens of thousands of illegal border crossers entered the U.S. on tourist visas planning to enter Canada illegally, where they then made refugee claims. Similarly foreign nationals who entered Canada on  student visas, claimed refugee status once their visas expired and they were expected to return to their home countries.

 

A refugee claimant arrives at the Roxham Road border crossing at the US-Canada border in Champlain, New York. Photo by Lars Hagberg/AFP Getty Images

 

Claimants for asylum may be given immediate access to government benefits, leading to uncontrolled surges in federal spending, and an unsustainable burden to Canadian communities trying to cope with such sudden influxes of foreigners taking advantage of Canada's reputation as an easy country to access entry to, with copious social benefits to be had. The Interim Housing Assistance Program picks up shelter costs and food for asylum claimants. It was revealed that some asylum claimants receive room and board benefits of over $200 daily.

 

Those asylum claimants who are accepted receive food and shelter to the equivalent of $84 daily for meals and $140 a day for hotel rooms. Gazans entering Canada were given exceptional additional federal payouts of some $3,000 each on entering Canada. Some 130,000 people accessed some form of benefit from the Interim Federal Health Program in 2016, a situation that has more than quadrupled to 611,000 according to the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

 

Even an ineligible asylum claimant can reach for at least two years of Canadian health benefits prior to rejection of their claim, given the current 24-month backlog at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Benefits can still be accessed until the claimant, if rejected, manages to exhaust all avenues of appeal, which can take years.  

 

An RCMP officer looks on as asylum seekers cross the Canada-U.S. border at Roxham Road . (Charles Contant/CBC)

 

Optics Vs Reality: Migrating Islamist Fundamentalism

"Saudi Arabia's export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal, fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fuelled global extremism and contributed to terrorism."
"[It is deplorable that] radical schools and mosques around the world [exist] that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism."
New York Times 2016 expose

"In each place I visited, the Wahhabi influence was an insidious presence, changing the local sense of identity; displacing historic, culturally vibrant forms of Islamic practice; and pulling along individuals who were either paid to follow their rules or custodians of the Wahhabi world view."
"Funding all this was Saudi money, which paid for things like the textbooks, mosques, TV stations and the training of Imams."
Farah Pandith, U.S. special representative to Muslim communities, U.S. Department of State

WikiLeaks documents involving cables between diplomats at the Saudi embassy in Ottawa and government officials in Riyadh, contain conversations from 2012 and 2013 about a $211,000 donation to a school in Ottawa and $134,000 to a school in Mississauga.  Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail

"There were also small signals that all was not well with the Muslim communities in Canada, especially those of Pakistani origin. For example, the mother of one of my children’s classmates of Pakistani origin, asked me why my kids sang the Canadian national anthem when it is haram, forbidden. Upon asking where she got that information, she confessed that the imam of the local mosque had told the congregation that it was against the faith to sing the national anthem, or, indeed, to show loyalty to Canada."
Raheel Raza, Pakistani Canadian, Writer, Activist

Special representative Farah Pandith toured 80 countries between 2009 to 2014 in pursuing her official mandate. Her conclusion after all that she had seen and experienced was that the Saudi influence succeeded in destroying 'tolerant' Islamic traditions. Of course, Saudi Arabia is not alone in this deliberate, institutional religiously ideological pursuit of normalizing extreme-to-radical Islam in countries around the world, particularly those in the West. The Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded to an alarming degree in infiltrating all levels of national government in the West in pursuit of establishing their own, and very similar brand of Islamism.

Moreover, although fundamentalist jihadi groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are identified as terrorist groups and listed as such on various government terror lists, they too are known to have a substantial presence abroad for the purpose of propaganda, enlistment and wealth-gathering, both through 'charitable' donations and through the substantial proceeds of criminal activities such as illicit drug dealing and weapons smuggling.

The schools (madrassas), community centers, mosques and other gathering points for Muslims abroad that have been built with foreign funding by countries whose agendas are to create a foundational space in the West for the proliferation of fundamentalist Islamic values have a defined purpose, to instill in followers the sense of Islamic entitlement to help alter the fundamental values of the nations they have migrated to, and challenge the indigenous laws while stifling the social culture with their own.

In Canada, the national security policy has seen fit to establish the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence; at the present time, a hollow sham under the Liberal government. An opposition Member of Parliament and former federal Minister in the previous Conservative-led government has introduced Bill C-371, the Prevention of Radicalization through Foreign Funding Act, now moving through Parliament and slated for a second reading vote a month hence, representing long-overdue legislation in the making.

The Bill would allow Canada the establishment of a list of foreign states meeting specific criteria; those who promote obvious forms of religious intolerance, and/or those who engage in activities supporting radicalization. All Canadian religious, cultural and educational institutions, should that Bill result in legislation making it legal, would be prohibited from accepting funding from listed foreign governments. Receiving funding from individuals and entities linked to those states would also fall under its restrictive provisions.

For fairly obvious reasons an exception clause would list a number of other countries reflecting Canada's own liberal democratic values; countries that include the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Israel would have listing immunity, among others. The Bill itself is an acknowledgement of the faulty permission of Canadian educational, religious and cultural institutions being influenced by foreign states that promote extremist ideologies. Canada's open, pluralist society is being subverted by these financial infusions in support of Islamist exceptionalism.

The Iranian Revolutionary Republic Islamist regime was invited by the previous Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to exit Canada, closing its embassy while withdrawing the Canadian mission and its diplomats from Tehran. The current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has stated aspirations of reversing that situation, re-establishing the Canadian mission in Tehran and inviting Iran's Ayatollahs to re-open their embassy in Ottawa.

The Khomeinist ideology which today rules Iran as a theocratic totalitarian government was fully involved in building networks sympathetic to its creed through the funding of religious institutions, schools and cultural centres within Canada. Two such Iranian cultural centres, one in Ottawa, the other in Toronto were seized in 2014 and their assets distributed to victims of terrorist attacks which Iran's proxy militia, the terrorist Hezbollah group had mounted on Iran's instructions, as a sponsor of Islamist terrorism.

While solving the problem of radicalization will remain a dilemma that alert governments must continue to confront, Bill C-371 can become a useful tool in blocking those maleficent influences within Canada. The Bill is there, it remains for the ruling Liberal government to affirm its intention to protect Canadians from ongoing terrorism in the name of Islam, by voting in favour of C-371 at its second reading.

It may be too late for France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and others to mount a defense against full Muslim conquest of their traditions, values and laws, but Canada, it is to be  hoped, still has time in its favour, but certainly not forever....

A case in point is Turkey's belligerent interest in the presence of German-Turks resident in Germany.  Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have spent billions constructing countless mosques servicing Muslims throughout Germany, and the sermons that come out of those mosques are definitely not geared to persuading German-Turks that they should render unto Caesar; rather than persuading Muslims to defer to German values, culture and laws.

Religious leaders in those mosques preach Islamist values and Sharia law, contrary to the citizenship of German Turks, who then turn around and complain they don't feel  'accepted' as equals in Germany, they feel alienated from its general society. Irascible, bellicose Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan feels entitled from time to time to scaldingly berate German authorities for mistreating Turkish Germans, brooking no interference in his own propensity to interfere in German politics.

Here's hoping Canada can do better.

Indigenous Shibboleth

"[Both Ancient Beringians and all Native Americans] descended from a single founding population that initially split from East Asians around 36 thousand years ago, with gene flow persisting until around 25 thousand years ago."
"[Human remains at Upward Sun River and modern Native Americans] derived from the same ancestral source, which carried a mixture of East Asian and Mal'ta related ancestry."
"[The Alaska study gives] direct genomic evidence that all Native Americans can be traced back to the same source population from a single Late Pleistocene founding event."
New Scientific paper, University of Alaska Fairbanks

"We're a country based on immigration, going right back to our, quote, Indigenous people, unquote, who were immigrants as well, 10, 12, 14,000 years ago."
(former) Canadian Governor-General David Johnston

"What we do when we look at the current data is we look at the patterns, and right now we have hundreds of sites that form a very distinctive pattern of slow expansion from southern Siberia to northern Siberia, into Alaska, and further south."
"It confirms itself by these multiple lines of evidence."
"It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this newly revealed people to our understanding of how ancient populations came to inhabit the Americas. This new information will allow us a more accurate picture of Native American prehistory. It is markedly more complex than we thought."
Professor Ben Potter, anthropological archeologist, University of Alaska Fairbanks

An illustration of the Upward Sun River camp in what is now Interior Alaska. Illustration by Eric S. Carlson in collaboration with Ben A. Potter

When then-Governor-General David Johnston stated that all those living in North America were, going back into ancient history, immigrants, he committed social-cultural-political Indigenous heresy. By merely iterating what has been known in anthropological and archaeological investigative circles for quite a few years, but not necessarily spoken out loud in public for fear of an Indigenous native backlash, he invited just that backlash, though he obviously hadn't intended to. He was, at the time, making an effort to reassure recent immigrants that they had joined a nation of immigrants.

The public uproar that followed, with First Nations groups lashing out at the soon-to-depart Governor-General for misreading history, lumping First Nations with European, Asian and African migrants to Canada creating intolerable insult not to be countenanced, and the dignified and learned David Johnson retreated from his scholarly lesson of migration in a follow-up public admission of inadvertently misguided linking of ancient migrants with current immigrants. Nonsense, of course, but in the greater interests of keeping the peace, a question of diplomacy.

As in science be damned; the illusions of a people convinced of their victimhood and entitlements must be assuaged in their sense of overwhelming grievance. But the science is in and it cannot be gainsaid. Most recently, to add to the knowledge already gathered, the ceremonial burial of two infants from 11,500 years past was discovered of ancient Beringians -- people who crossed the Bering Land Bridge once connecting North American to Asia -- leading to the interpretation of their DNA identifying them as having emanated out of Asia.

In a new research paper published in the journal Nature, the discovery at Upward Sun River in central Alaska was linked to a migrating group out of a population in eastern Asia isolated for thousands of years from a greater population, migrating into Alaska around 15,000 years ago. According to anthropological archaeologist Ben Potter, tool technology found among them gives additional clear linkages to Asian groups.

Though scientific investigation has not made clear how Ancient Beringians fared, whether absorbed into other Native Americans or became victims of conflict, the latest research demonstrates through this first genetic analysis of the oldest human remains in the American area of Beringia, that both Native Americans and Ancient Beringians had a common descent. The Mal'ta were an ancient population close to Lake Baikal in what is now Siberia, identified from the remains of a four-year-old boy who lived and died there 24,000 years earlier.

Scientific theory has progressed to the point where theory has been validated by new findings and investigations, along with technologically advanced genetic screening linked to archaeology. There remain instances where cultural determination and social practices overrule science and technology, however, as in Kennewick Man dating to 9,000 years ago when academic science was overruled in civil courts acceding that Native American tribes could reclaim the remains for burial, preventing additional study.

Cultural sensitivity urges caution lest the sensibilities and righteously victimized outrage of Native Americans be stricken with the insults of doubt that they have always been the original inhabitants of North America, not as science now claims, original immigrants from elsewhere, most notably Asia. Native Americans insist that their legends prove positively that their ancestors lived since time immemorial on the land co-opted by late-arrival Europeans.

Indigenous North Americans vastly prefer their version of land possession and heritage, spurning scientific enquiry that has succeeded in giving ample proof of Indigenous Americans moving across a then-accessible land bridge to North America as a racist, colonial myth whose purpose is obvious; to assault Indigenous dignity, veracity and heritage.

"We didn’t know this population existed."
"These data also provide the first direct evidence of the initial founding Native American population, which sheds new light on how these early populations were migrating and settling throughout North America."
Ben Potter, lead study author, professor of anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks

UAF photo courtesy of Ben Potter   Members of the archaeology field team watch as University of Alaska Fairbanks professors Ben Potter and Josh Reuther excavate at the Upward Sun River site

The Resurrection of Slavery

"Slavery has no place in our world and these actions are among the most egregious abuses of human rights."
"[The perpetrators must be brought to justice; appropriate UN bodies are] to actively pursue this matter."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

"[I plan to establish a] commission to investigate these reports in order to apprehend and bring those responsible to justice."
Ahmed Metig, deputy prime minister Government of National Accord, Tripoli, Libya

Migrants rescued from the Mediterranean arrive at a naval base in Tripoli in October.   CNN

CNN has unleashed its findings on an active slave market in action in Libya, raising outrage in the West and the usual expressions of shock and denunciation in the United Nations, while Libyan authorities of course had no idea that anything of this nature was being carried out and they will immediately launch an investigation to get to the source of the problem. And then, of course, initiate steps to immediately resolve it to everyone's satisfaction.

There is a certain situation which has been previously addressed and that address has resulted in certain consequences. The situation being an ongoing flood of refugees and opportunity-seekers from across the Middle East and North and West Africa to enter Europe and declare themselves refugees, in expectation of being embraced by humanitarian groups and ushered into the countries of their choice which just happen to have the most generous social services available to meet their urgent needs.

But since the European Union, in understandable distress and no little amount of stress emanating from the situation from among their disparate members, many of which have had their resources strained and others which refuse to have their resources used at all, convinced the Libyan government that their coast guard should undertake a strategy to hold back the living tide of people willing to risk death at sea for the opportunity to coast into Europe.

Migrants sit in a detention centre run by the interior ministry of Libya's eastern-based government, in Benghazi Credit: Reuters

The consequences for having stemmed that tide to a sizeable degree is that Libya is stuffed with migrants and refugees. They have been warehoused, their immediate subsistence needs met with donations from the source that refuses them entry and NGOs, and a new business venture other than smuggling the foreigners out of Libya and into Europe has arisen. New opportunities always seem to present themselves, and enterprising criminal elements waste no time taking advantage.

Just think of it: Arab governments failed the needs of their people; Arab governments oppressed their people and when a popular uprising resulted, those same governments went to war against their people, and aside from slaughtering the impudent discontents, created massive numbers of dispossessed, displaced from their familiar geography, along with refugees. And now that the victims have sought alternatives for their lives, Arab traders in human lives have surfaced to gain profit.

According to testimony from the International Organization for Migration and other humanitarian agencies, for months refugees and haven seekers have been crowding the auction blocks of Libyan slave markets to be sold as working slaves throughout the region, where West Africans are advertised as "big strong boys for farm work". Bidders eyeing the migrants succeed in their purchases for as little as $400 for each slave.

The Treeq Alsika Migrant Detention Center in Tripoli, where some migrants are held by Libyan authorities before they are repatriated.   CNN

So, then, it is not Arab governments at fault for creating these teeming numbers of refugees fleeing conflict, and migrants looking to find a promising future for themselves elsewhere than in their opportunity-scarce homelands, but the West, which has failed to continue absorbing migrants/refugees by their millions. If the smugglers in Libya cannot dispatch the refugees in those unseaworthy vessels taking all their available funds to do so, then they will make their hard-earned wealth by auctioning them off as slaves.

According to Alpha Conde, president of Guinea, chairman of the African Union -- the source of many of the migrants -- an inquiry and prosecutions reflecting the "despicable trade ... from another era", must result from these revelations, while the Senegalese government spoke of the slave market as a "blight on the conscience of humanity". Not a blight on Africa, on Arab and Muslim profiteers, but on "humanity", doublespeak for the West.

The International Migration Organization says it has gathered evidence of slavery in Libya   Getty Images

Racist Abuse : A Terrible Reality

"It's a brutal, terrible reality, but young people need to know the risks before deciding to go."
"Bottom line: This proves how essential it is that migrant and refugee children have access to safe and legal migration pathways."
Christopher Tidey, UNICEF spokesman

Sub-Saharan migrants and refugees begging for their release in a detention center in Surman, Libya. Narciso Contreras for Fondation Carmignac

"I've seen very widespread racism and xenophobia in Libya."  
"Dark skinned people in general face discrimination. If you're a Syrian Arab who speaks the language, you're definitely better off."
Hanan Salah, senior Libya researcher, Human Rights Watch.

"It's a kind of slavery. It is something from the past."
"Since 2011, the Libyan economy has been in freefall. There is no money in the banks, public sector workers go unpaid and the black market is booming. People fetch a high price."
"I came to Libya to document the migrant crisis, the humanitarian crisis of migrants trying to reach Europe through Libyan territory. But actually what I found going in Libya is a market."
Narciso Contreras, photojournalist

Women refugees and migrants queue in the prison yard as they are loaded onto buses to be transferred to another detention centre. Narciso Contreras for Fondation Carmignac

Muslims have created a word with which to besmirch any non-Muslims who criticize any aspect of Islam, the Koran, the Prophet Mohammad, the behaviour of Islamic groups, and that word is one they like to equate with racism: "Islamophobia". As though a vast public outside the world of Islam must forbear for questioning whether Islam is indeed a religion of peace in light of the sectarian conflict that has distinguished Arab and Muslim societies with their viral tribal animosities toward one another.

Yet alone the matter of jihadist groups and individuals dedicating themselves to the martyrdom suicide missions of obliterating the lives of non-believers in Islam, in compliance with the sacred texts themselves. Not to take notice, not to view Islam with alarm and foreboding given all these experiences would require a deliberate effort to overlook the carnage and the atrocities committed in the name of Islam, cleansing the world of those refusing to submit to Islam.

The Koran and the Hadiths do instruct the faithful to look upon other Muslims as brothers, to extend to them the care and consideration owing to brethren of the faith. Charity among Muslims is stressed as an obligation. But those of the faith who are swift to define criticism of Islam as "racist" in origin, the epitome of bigotry, somehow fail to recognize that they themselves are exemplars of true racism, not those whom they accuse of such for questioning Islam.

The Arab leaders of Sudan, as an example, set out to slaughter, mass rape, drive from the land, Black Darfurians for daring to expect equal treatment as Sudanese when a protest arose over Arab herders driving their animals onto Black farmers' agricultural farmlands, destroying their livelihoods. The Arab Janjaweed were swift to join the Sudanese military gunning down Darfurians with helicopter gunships, mass-raping women, and creating a mass movement of refugees.

In Libya, a North African country fractured by the West's intervention in aiding Arab tribal insurrections against Moammar Ghaddafi the long-term strongman of Libya, chaos reigns now with two opposing governments and the presence of armed militias representing tribal interests, where migrants from across Africa have been migrating to Libya in hopes of securing passage on unseaworthy smugglers' vessels to hazard a journey toward Italy or Greece.

While in Libya they are subjected to dreadful persecution, though they pride themselves as Muslim just like those who view their dark skins with contempt, refusing to allow the Black Muslims to pray alongside the Arab Muslims. "They think they're better than us. They say we're created different from them", said a despairing 18-year-old from Ghana, Kalilu Drammeh, hoping eventually to make his way through to Europe.

Tens of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans continue to make their way through to Libya where they depend on smugglers for help in crossing the Mediterranean. The smuggling fees, thousands of dollars, require migrants to work to raise the needed funds to be spirited away to Europe. Harsh conditions and abuse await them in lawless, violent Libya where over 132,000 migrants made the crossing this year, with over 2,300 drowning in the attempt.

North Africans have a fairly low opinion of sub-Saharan Africans, and always have. UNICEF and the International Organization for Migration speaks of the latter as the most vulnerable of all migrants, because they are black, facing viral discrimination. And those, according to the report who face the  highest risk of exploitation and abuse are those travelling alone, those who are poorly educated and children of any age group of the migrants enduring arduous and long journeys to get to Libya.

Migrants and refugees numbering in the tens of thousands between the ages of 14 to 24 were interviewed and the conclusion was reached that Libyan smugglers abuse the sub-Saharan migrants far more harshly than is the experience of other migrants, and they are in the greatest danger. The report issued by UNICEF stated: "They contend with pervasive lawlessness and violence and are often detained by state  authorities and others".

Women are forced to work as prostitutes in the hope of being able to save money for their seaborne trip, while men are beaten and sometimes shot by smugglers. Some of the migrants are locked up and forced to call relatives for ransoms to effect their release by traffickers. When the migrants do manage to find work from Libyan Arabs they are paid less, reflecting the colour of their skin. Racism and extreme prejudice aligned with maltreatment at the hands of those who espouse the religion of peace.

Bottom line: charities should use their fine auspices to go to the source of the migration epidemic to persuade potential migrants that their futures lie in their countries of origin. That remaining there and becoming politically active to effect social changes and rid themselves of the tribal and clan leaders who oppress the people should be their goal, not leaving home and embarking on a perilous overland journey to risk their lives at sea to reach a continent that has far too places for them.

At the very least, if immigration is their intention, to use legal immigration means to achieve their goal. Time-consuming yes, but undertaking the legal process rather than the dangerous illegal migration they commit to, is safe and if they qualify to be accepted, they will have done so without placing their lives and their futures in jeopardy.

What remains of a rubber boat floats in the Mediterranean Sea after having been set ablaze.
Narciso Contreras for Fondation Carmignac

Unappealing Refugee Claimant Prospects 

"To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada."
"Regardless of who you are or where you come from, there's always a place for you in Canada."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ottawa, Canada

Canada offers refugee protection to some people in Canada who fear persecution or who would be in danger if they had to leave. Some dangers they may face include:

• torture
• a risk to their life, or
• a risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.

If you feel you could face one of these risks if you go back to your home country or the country where you normally live, you may be able to seek protection in Canada as a refugee.
Government of Canada

An asylum seeker claiming to be from Eritrea is confronted by an RCMP officer as he crosses the border into Canada last month from Champlain, N.Y. (Paul Chiasson/Canadian Press)

It was historically the United States of America that was known as the land of the brave and the free, eager to welcome the oppressed of the world to join it in building into one of the greatest modern nations on Earth, a land of opportunity and equality, where one's heritage, culture, ethnic group or religion made no difference; a great melting pot of humanity welcoming all and sundry. Until it no longer would, because everything must be accomplished in an orderly manner and no nation on this globe willingly accepts the presence of those whose culture and religion is averse to democracy and whose presence potentially represents a burden on the one hand and a potential threat on the other.

In present-day America the issue of undocumented or illegal migrants living in their millions in the country, often in a generational time-span with no official status, has caused a reaction, actually a polarized reaction for it seems that half the population (including industry) would like the presence of the undocumented 'illegals' to be 'normalized' through extending citizenship to them as long as they have no criminal record, and the other half of the population would prefer to see them deported and returned to their countries from which they fled purposing to arrive at the land of freedom and opportunity....

Canada's current government leader is a man of unreconstructed liberalism, enchanted by the kind of socialism he and his father before him felt was represented by Cuba. Typically it is wealthy families who often admire an ideology that would, if fully implemented, deprive them of their wealth for the greater good of dispersing wealth equally among all. Justin Trudeau, as first premier of the nation, like his father before him, aspires to hold onto his personal wealth and grow it, while lecturing others of his class of their obligation to surrender more of their wealth to the public weal.

And in reaction to the administration of a new American presidency which has closed ranks around those preferring to invite illegals to leave the country which has become near, dear and familiar to them, opened his heart and his country and in the process has presented himself on the world stage as the saviour of the huddled masses desperate to escape poverty, persecution and conflict, by stating his version of the U.S.'s generous offer to the oppressed: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". Deliberately portraying himself in such a mode as to draw to himself plaudits of admiration from the international community and the liberal-left.

The international community of potential have-seekers and economic migrants no doubt picked up their opportunity-antennae and now Canada is struggling to deal with an unprecedented strain on its immigration and refugee-accepting situation. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada recently released statistics to show that in the first six months of this year, 27,440 claims for asylum were filed, almost a peak record high. And the expectation that a veritable flood will continue upward from those numbers is high.

Canada's Immigration Minister under Mr. Trudeau's government is himself a former refugee from Somalia, a failed African country rife with terrorism and ongoing violent upheaval. Minister Ahmed Hussen, at a meeting with immigration organizations taking place in New York City, stated that based on current trends, Canada could realize 40,000 refugee claims by year's end. That number on top of the approximately quarter-million immigrants that make application to emigrate to Canada annually from their home countries.

The official opposition in Canada is not entirely thrilled with the situation, though they too when in government approved the quarter- to third-million immigration figures annually. "Given the global forced displacement and forced migration, this is now a public policy concern. Nobody is saying that this is going to stop", said the Conservative immigration and refugee critic at that same N.Y.C. meeting. Federal and provincial governments are strained with the cost of at least $353.9 million upwards to $548.8 million it takes to process claims and provide vital services -- cost per claim ranging from $12,900 to $20,000.

Aside from those administrative costs there is the cost of deporting claimants whose applications fail; which is to say, if they can be located, to be deported. Additional costs are those related to aid given to refugee claimants; housing, food, medical attention, straining already strained social services. In August alone the RCMP intercepted 5,530 people crossing illegally from New York State into Quebec, double the number who made that trip in July. British Columbia registered a spike in refugee claimants. Most of those entering Manitoba were Somalian in origin.

As for British Columbia, settlement organizations register refugee seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, Mexico and Turkey, among others; dozens of countries in all. The Immigration and Refugee board warns it is ill-equipped to manage the rise in claims, since it already suffers a backlog it is struggling to deal with. Without system improvements and/or additional resources those rising claims could result in wait times up to 11 years by 2021. Which translates to extended stays in the country by claimants awaiting the disposition of their claims.

Some of those claimants simply melt into the population living underground, and others, if their claims are rejected will appeal, appeal and appeal.

Australian Shame

"Protecting the refugees who have been warehoused in places like Manus Island and Nauru is the responsibility and obligation of Australia. They're responsible for providing protection and they're certainly responsible for the human rights violations that these refugees are enduring."
"They [Australian officials] do not get to sub-contract their responsibilities under international law to another country."
"All that stands in the way of refugees, who are being held in these terrible detention centres, being protected is political will on the part of the Australian government."
Alex Neve, secretary general, Amnesty Canada

  Hundreds have died trying to reach Australia in inadequate and overcrowded boats

"I witnessed the brutal toll of detention on Nauru. Health services are under-resourced, inevitably leading to people being sent to Australia for expert treatment, usually psychiatric care. I saw a man slash himself with a broken light bulb, and witnessed another barking like a dog during a psychotic episode. I comforted men who had attempted suicide. Across the detention network, there’s a report of a sexual assault every 13 days."
For those who don’t succumb to the emotional and mental anguish of detention, the islands offer little in the way of physical protection. Reza Berati, a 23-year-old Iranian man, was killed during a riot on Feb. 17, 2014, in Manus Island — by a detention center staff member, no less. On Sept. 5 of that year, an Iranian named Hamid Kehazaei, 24, died of a treatable infection in his foot. Fazel Chegeni, an Iranian Kurd, was found dead on Nov. 8, 2015, after escaping Christmas Island Detention Center, where he had been held for 10 weeks. A coronial inquest will formally determine Fazel’s cause of death, but reports say he had been psychologically crushed by years of waiting.
Mark Isaacs, ForeignPolicy.com

Australia has for years struggled with the advent of asylum seekers streaming toward the island in the hope of being taken in as refugees. In 2001, Australia launched what it named "Pacific Solution", which was a scheme to ensure that refugees simply didn't make it as far as Australia's shores. It would intercept boats of refugees and send them back out to sea to make their way however they could, to their place of origins, or seek haven elsewhere.

Finally, Australian authorities signed a 'rental' deal with Papua, New Guinea  and with the island state of Nauru, distant from Australia by thousands of kilometres, to house refugees in special holding camps with no facilities for their care, leading to a humanitarian disaster as refugees languished without hope that they would ever be able to find a place for themselves and their futures. Australia has stated with finality that it would never welcome any of the refugees who have been in those camps for years, into Australia.

Migrants have been smuggled through Indonesia en route to Australia, coming from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar and Vietnam. The rickety vessels they have travelled on are hardly seaworthy, and thousands of lives are estimated to have been lost at sea in the attempt to reach Australian shores where a friendly, let alone compassionate welcome has never been extended. A question does hover, however, and that is why Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, has not extended a brotherly welcome to these mostly Muslim migrants seeking haven?

As with the millions of desperate refugees streaming out of Syria -- as well as the Eritrean, Gazan, Afghan, Libyan asylum seekers leaving the Middle East for Europe which has initially welcomed them only to find themselves utterly engulfed -- the reputation of Islam has not been advanced either by the fact that none of the wealthy Gulf oilstates have taken in refugees, nor that it is Muslims whose deadly predations target other Muslims that have created this world-shattering crisis of forced migration.

The dilemma facing the Australian government in its unwillingness to take in the refugees, and its decision to keep them in hopelessly squalid conditions inimical to any quality of life itself, bringing down the condemnation of the United Nations and other Western countries, is how to proceed. The idea was bruited about that Canada could be asked to absorb some of those refugees. Save the Children Australia endorsed the position of the Opposition Labor party to have Canada absorb them.

Amnesty Canada's head, Alex Neve, condemns the idea, insisting that the obligation is Australia's alone under international law and the UN Refugee Convention. Compassion seems to elude Australia and Amnesty Canada, both. But Australia is forced now to act since New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled that the Manus Island refugee centre is illegal and must be shuttered. The utterly heartless treatment of the refugees under Australia's policy of prolonged detention is inhumane.

The despicable conditions under which these people have been detained cannot be defended. Living in the misery of uncertainty is bad enough, but throw in abuse, filth, poor access to health care, to food and to potable water, with nothing to do but wait interminably for some action that might be taken to relieve these refugees from their enforced living hell, reflects poorly on a country which began its current existence as a prison colony, wrenching land from its aboriginal inhabitants.

If Canada's decision ultimately is to absorb the greater number of those incarcerated, living under such horrible conditions, it can only be to the credit of humanity. Arguments over whose responsibility this represents represent the splitting of humanitarian hairs and benefit no one. Such a hopeless situation for people desperate to be rescued from their living hell deserves a humanitarian solution; if Australia refuses, Canada should not.

Suffering Humanity

"We're allowing a level of destruction we will never have the means to address. They're wiping one city after another off the map."
Peter Harling, International Crisis Group

"We had nothing to stay for. Every house here is damaged. In every house there is the smell of war."
"People are only living here because they don't have any choice and because they suffered too much as refugees."
Abdullah Kurdi, former resident of Kobani, father of Aylan, 3, Ghaleb, 4: dead.

"Aleppo is by far the most devastated thing any of us have ever seen. I call it Stalingrad."
"You have large urban areas that are just gone. They are flattened to all intents and purposes."
Lars Bromley, analyst, satellite imagery, UN Institute for Training and Research

Wreckage left by fighting on a street in the center of the Syrian town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, on January 28. Kurdish forces recaptured the strategic town on the Turkish frontier on January 26 in a symbolic blow against ISIS jihadists who have seized swaths of territory in a brutal onslaught across Syria and Iraq -- Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

The devastation is mind-boggling; it is so all-encompassing, to be unimaginable to any sane mind. That anyone would set out with the purpose and the determination to destroy the total infrastructure on which people in any civilized society depend to live their daily lives, in a gesture of hatred for their sect, their tribal allegiance, their demands as a majority for equality of opportunities that accrue to the ruling minority, is beyond reason and enters the realm of psychotic savagery.

But this is precisely what the Alawite Shiite regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad set out to do when he responded to the peaceful protests over four years ago of Syrian Sunnis who were aggrieved at their lack of opportunity to advance their interests in a country that was their own, ruled by a political-ideological group that oppressed them. Their president took their protests under advisement by arresting and torturing children and other vulnerable people incautious enough to assault his policies.

From there he steadily progressed to starving out through isolation whole communities, by sending helicopter gunships to target bread lines, by having his military commit nighttime chemical bombings, by authorizing the use of barrel bombs whose deadly shrapnel tore people apart. And by creating an atmosphere where fully half of the population of 22-million Syrians fled the terror, to become migrants within the country and refugees outside it.

They are there in their millions, in refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, living in squalid despair with bare accommodation and nothing for children's needs. Ill-treated through the resentment of the surrounding indigenous population, some among them venture to return to their bombed-out villages in Syria rather than live without dignity among those who view them with contempt.

Aleppo, Syria - whole neighbourhoods have been destroyed during the war. Photo: Jacob Simkin/NurPhoto/Corbis Photograph: Jacob Simkin/NurPhoto/Corbis

An estimated 2.1-million homes, half of the country's hospitals, and over seven thousand schools have been destroyed in the ravaging conflict, according to United Nations figures. Damage to the country's infrastructure is estimated to be $270-billion; rebuilding is felt to run to over $300-billion, according to Abdallah al-Dardari, a former Syrian government minister now heading the National Agenda for Syria program at the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

The United States, by comparison, spend $30-billion in reconstruction in Iraq. Mr. Dardari vented his opinion: "I don't know who will fund this", in view of the fact that any government would discover itself "ruling over a pile of rubble". One million people have been wounded in the civil war, while 7.6-million have been displaced within the country and four million have become external refugees. That, with the implacable fact that over a quarter of a million Syrians have died over the period of conflict.

The destruction is incredibly dire, but it continues. And the greater the number of buildings destroyed, the more homes lost, the increasing numbers of shops and businesses are flattened, the less people have to leave behind as they run for their lives. Of course, should they wish to return if and when the war is over, there will be nothing for them to return to. When Mr. Kurdi returned to his hometown of Kobani after the death of his wife Rayhan and their two sons by drowning as they left Turkey to attempt to reach Greece, he discovered his family's home entirely destroyed.

The Islamic State terrorists had challenged the Kurds for possession of Kobani. The U.S.-led air bombing mission ultimately aided the Kurds in their battle to re-possess Kobani. President Obama speaks of that victory in ousting Islamic State and restoring Kobani to Kurdish hands as a great victory, one of the greatest triumphs of the war, as outnumbered Kurdish fighters defeated the vicious Islamist invaders. Kobani is a name of a place that once was, now, a town utterly destroyed.

And as such it is a reflection of cities, towns and villages across the country. One of Syria's major cities, Aleppo, has seen over 14,000 buildings destroyed, and other major Syrian cities reflect as well an unforgiving war by a tyrant against his own people. What Islamic State has destroyed is not in quite the same ball park. The threat that ISIL represents because of the visibly proud presentation of the atrocities they commit concerns the world. The threat that the regime has proven itself to be toward humanity is interior and hidden.

But it, largely, is responsible for Europe being flooded with the desperation of refugees, their plight inciting other downtrodden migrants who suffer from dreadful governments in conflict zones and areas of general dysfunction leading to horrendous privation and loss of hope, to join the Syrian hordes, inflating their numbers by haven-seekers from Asia and Africa, countless countries on three continents with one thing in common: the prevalence of Islam.

Looking for Solutions

It's not possible to overlook feeling a pang of sorrow and regret for the introspective concerns of many Canadian Muslims in the wake of the most recent jihadist depredations, the only as-yet successful violent assaults to be carried out on Canadian soil. All other such planned assaults have been apprehended, and perhaps the fact that they have, before they could be carried out, endowed us all with a sense of complacency.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang   Police teams enter Centre Block at Parliament Hill in Ottawa 

on on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014. A gunman opened fire at the National War Memorial, wounding a 

soldier, then moved to nearby Parliament Hill and wounded a security guard before he was shot, 

reportedly by Parliament's sergeant-at-arms. 

 

Our very polite assertions of Islamist fundamentalist atrocities, trotted out each time we hear of a fresh assault on the civilized sensibilities of the West when viewing one of the blockbuster videos of beheadings that Islamic State is so fond of parading on line, that "this has nothing to do with Islam", is a sham of shameful dimensions. Since Sharia law promotes jihad, not the polite introspective form of becoming a 'better Muslim', but the deadly-odious form of violent bloodshed, it is indeed Islam.

And while most Canadians would never in their wildest nightmares think of blaming an entire group of religious faithful for the failings of some among them in embracing the medieval brutality of the original prosetylization techniques so typical of historical Islam in broadening its appeal by force and conquest, the fact remains that though there is a very limited number of Muslims who perform violent jihad, a greater number express some sympathy for it.

So, what to do? Expel wholesale anyone with Canadian citizenship who expresses unsavoury personal opinions about violent jihad? Brand their foreheads with a large "J" to identify their presence in society? Warn them under the weight of newly-imposed laws more redolent of wretched totalitarian governments that their views are unwelcome within Canada and they will be prosecuted or worse, for expressing them?

We're pretty impotent, come to think of it. But how about viewing the psychopathic personalities that embrace violent Islam as unwelcome because they have effectively betrayed Canadian values which in the breach as well as in vibrant practise negates their right to citizenship? Evidently recent studies point out that those who leap to the opportunity to become jihadists don't necessary have mental health issues.
Momin Khawaja, pictured entering the Elgin Street courthouse and as a high school student at Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School (inset), faces seven terror-related charges in connection with a 2004 plot to blow up several targets in London, England. File photo

So scrub that excuse. But we still don't want to welcome their presence among us, since they're clearly not to be trusted, express hatred of the democratic way of life, vastly prefer to live without the kinds of laws that make safety and security of the person an imperative to a free and democratic society with respect for all and equality assured for all.

We've enacted laws to stop them from heading abroad, to remove their passports, to force them to remain within Canada. Why? When we should be ushering them out the airport door and into the planes that will take them to their destination where they can complete their destiny; either to be flown by deadly events to the heavens above, or to be mired in a miserable society they long to be part of where personal freedom is unknown and absolute surrender to a deadly theocracy is the norm.