Come One, Come All!

"Never use threat, force or pressure to make someone have sex."

"Women can ... choose who they marry."

"If you have sex with someone without their consent, this is called rape"

"Rape is a serious crime in the U.K. You could go to prison, lose your support and accommodation, and it will affect your asylum claim."

New U.K. orientation manual for migrants 

 

"All permanent residents and protected persons are eligible for IRCC-funded settlement services [to] help them integrate and build a successful life in Canada as quickly as possible and include information on rights and freedoms of individuals according to Canadian law, understanding of Canadian values, as well as their responsibilities and obligations."

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson

600 Gaza refugees enter Canada in 2005  CBC News

 

The United Kingdom, overwhelmed by the presence of migrants, faces a long string of social/cultural problems related to different customs and values being transplanted alongside the migrants into Britain. An epidemic of violence has erupted for several years unlike what the United Kingdom has previously experienced, a stream of non-stop incidents that fall far outside the normal social contract of the Emerald Isle's traditional population. Rapes by migrants perpetrated against vulnerable men, women, teens, even children, taking place in wooded areas, parks, beach change-rooms and rental units.

 

Grooming Gangs in the U.K. Machiavelli Foundation

 

It took long enough for the British Government to pay attention to the scandals that for years had stalked communities where Muslim men, mostly of Pakistani origins, whose sex culture was responsible for grooming gangs focused on raping and using young Caucasian girls as sex slaves, renting out their services for fun and profit. It wasn't that the situation was unknown to British authorities, but that it was quite simply too inconvenient for them to 'notice' much less act on the practise, given the large Muslim population and accusations of 'Islamophobic' racism to be avoided at all costs.

 

Canada too, as it happens, finds itself in inconvenient waters with the surge of the past decade of immigrants, refugees and migrants infiltrating Canadian society. And in Canada not-too-subtle incidents of migrants in the country bringing with them customs contradictory to Western human rights values where incestuous relations, stranger-rape, organized crime, underage marriages, polygamy, genital mutilation offend Canadian customs and laws.

 

In 2015, during the federal election Prime Minister Stephen Harper's election campaign was rife with outrage from civil rights groups and the growing Muslim community in Canada over his government's release of 'instructions for immigrants' booklet Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship that advised foreigners entering Canada as landed immigrants and permanent residents on their way to achieving citizenship, that Canada's welcome did not include 'barbaric cultural practices' such as spousal abuse, 'honour killings', female genital mutilation, and forced polygamy.

 

Burqa ban in Great Britain?  Independent

 

How times have changed; the instructions of yesteryear rejected by the electorate have, by necessity since then been rejuvenated where marriage fraud warning is circulated by government auspices. In Canada too there are those requiring an explanation why it is frowned upon to rape children. A 'Pre-Departure Guide for Newcomers to Canada', published in 2025 focuses on newcomer rights rather than their responsibilities to the new country they will inhabit. 

 

Gently there are hints as to what is now of vital importance to this current progressive government; an acceptance of the presence of transgenderism, where readers are instructed that the LGBTQ-2 community in Canada is not only accepted, supported and valued, but so too is the right of the nation's children to question their from-birth designation as male or female. Issues such as 'lining up', 'making eye contact' and 'using underarm deodorant' are given their due place in the booklet.

 

Criminal activities are also addressed such as a jail term will come with carrying a firearm without a permit, and unwanted sexual touching or remarks may elicit a fine, or even prison. Bribery, polygamy, female genital mutilation and 'Making, sharing or owning photos of naked children', 'forcing others into marriage', and 'having sex with children', are similarly frowned upon and the letter of the law may be applied. Although truth to tell, the justice system goes easy on skin tones and ethnicity and cultures, with reduced sentences applied.

 

Family violence is frowned upon and "Killing a family member as a way to save a family's honour", is definitely unacceptable. Also addressed is the virtue of working for a living, rather than becoming wholly dependent on Canada Child Benefit payments which, when enough children in a family receive those generous benefits can sustain a family, without a breadwinner breaking a sweat. ($679.75 per month ($8,157 per year) for each child under 6, and $573.58 per month ($6,883 per year) for each child aged 6 to 17 for the 2026–2027 year.

 

What Muslim female dress means as a  wedge issue in Canada  TVO Today

 

 

Canada, Straining to Accommodate A Huge Influx of Migrants, Refugees, Asylum Seekers

"Under the Liberals,the Interim Federal Health Program [IFHP], the program that provides benefits to asylum claimants, has morphed well beyond its initial intent of providing care to a small number of legitimate refugees who are fleeing to Canada from war zones into a massive boondoggle that provides care to bogus asylum claimants."

"The Liberals are proposing to set up a costly bureaucracy that would still force Canadian taxpayers to foot the bill for 70 percent of the premium health-care costs that failed asylum claimants incur." 

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, Opposition immigration critic  

Conservative member of Parliament Michelle Rempel Garner asks a question during question period in the House of Commons (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

 

A report published this month by the Parliamentary Budget Office broke down rising costs of the IFHP. The program has risen from $226 million in 2019 to $1 billion in 2025. The cost is projected to climb to over $1.5 billion by 2030. The number of beneficiaries, according to the PBO, will continue to grow and to expand to over 680,000 eligible beneficiaries in 2029-30. 

 

Coverage  under the program begins with basic and supplemental health care of which the basic coverage is inclusive of hospital services, services from medical doctors, registered nurses and other licensed health care providers along with ambulance services and lab and diagnostic services (including blood tests and ultrasounds). Psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and speech language therapists, as well as assistive devices such as prosthetics, mobility aids and hearing aids, home care and long-term care, urgent dental care and limited vision care, medical supplies and equipment, represent the supplemental portion. On top of which is prescription drug coverage. 

 

All of which represent a pretty exhaustive parade of medical services for people who have never paid into the Canadian tax system that supports these social services. Among whom are those whose claims for migrant or refugee status have been refused, most of whom are either to be deported or are expected to leave the country of their own volition. Again, many among them exhaust all avenues of appeal, which can take years to get through the system. While in Canada they are entitled to claim social services.

 

Canadians welcome Syrian refugees to Toronto. (Photo: stacey_newman/iStock.com)

 

This, at a time when Canadian hospitals are stretched beyond their limits to provide elementary care to Canadian citizens, where wait times at emergency clinics can stretch to 12 hours before a physician can examine people awaiting care after triage investigation instructs them to take a seat in crowded emergency facilities until they can be accommodated. In a health care system where waiting for surgery that can be life-saving can stretch out into months while health conditions continue to fester and become more aggravated.

 

MP Rempel Garner brought forward a motion to restrict health care benefits to failed asylum claimants. Her motion calls on the federal government to find savings through reviewing the program, to restrict federal benefits received by rejected asylum claimants to emergency life-saving health care only, to provide an annual report to Parliament of the IFHP program and pass policies to expel foreign nations immediately who are convicted of serious crimes while in Canada. 

 

 

"We want to still protect those refugees and those people that are claiming the help and need from Canada that legitimately deserves to be protected including the children. We will continue to do that", responded federal Immigration Minister Lena Diab. Leading Rempel Garner to state that the government sits back awaiting failed refugees to respond to deportation orders, many of whose sole source of income in Canada is social welfare.

 

According to data by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Canada's refugee backlog stands at 299,960 from January. Wait times for processing of refugee and migrant claims can vary, depending on the complexity of each case, taking anywhere from months to years for completion. During that time, points out Rempel Garner, applicants can claim various types of benefits. The open question remains the status of rejected asylum claimants who appeal decisions, extending to a much longer process of determination.

 

Retroactive from 2020 the Liberal government has changed refugee rules through its borders bill to make refugee claims ineligible if they are made one year or more after the day of  entry to Canada. The new rule would render some 19,000 to 50,000 asylum claims filed between June and October 2025 ineligible. 

 

 

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)

 

Entering Canada? No Problem!

Canada Border Services Agency

"Our goal at the border is to build the file to be able to identify non-genuine claims, and right now we're kind of relying on people to self-declare that they're a non-genuine claim."

"Claimants spend significantly less time meaningfully interacting with officers, with the result of reduced security for the sake of expediency."

"That was our opportunity to ask follow-up questions, make sure that the claim is genuine. We could look for things like indications of coaching, human smuggling, that kind of thing."

"We're not verifying anyone's story at all. The ability for us to confirm whether or not their story is genuine has really been removed." 

"To speed things up, because we are short-staffed, we are allowing people into the country without first doing ... security screening."

"It's exactly the people with the greatest motivation to not self-declare who are going to be the ones who don't self-declare and don't report back."

"They essentially disappear into Canada." 

Mark Weber, president, Customs and Immigration Union  

Find out if you're inadmissible to Canada

Find out why you could be denied a visa or refused entry to Canada.

Security screening

Learn why border services officers may perform security screenings to help them determine if you can enter Canada.

Enforcing immigration laws in Canada

Get information on when and why border services officers arrest, detain and remove citizens of other countries.

Airport arrival kiosks and eGates

Verify your identity and make an on-screen customs declaration at Canada's major international airports using primary inspection kiosks and eGates.

Canadian customs: Secondary inspections

Border officers may need more details about yourself, your children, your pets or belongings.

1. Canada.ca
2. National security and defence
3. Securing the border

So, above on the Canada.ca webpage the very basics of the entry-security-screening process is outlined. What to expect when entering Canada. Only that isn't exactly what happens any longer. A landslide of people declaring themselves refugees seeking haven, irregular migrants and others in like position have overwhelmed the screening capacity of border agents. It has become standard practice of late for border officials to make use of an 'honour system', a self-declaration on the part of a would-be entrant to Canada that they have no ulterior motives to come to the country, none at all, nossir!

The required number of personnel, the time it would take to conduct a proper security screening, entirely absent the process. Making a public statement to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration,  Mark Weber, president of the Customs and Immigration Union, frankly admitted that lack of personnel and a constricted time-schedule have mitigated against the basic necessity of screening entrants to the country and this, at a time of internal social and political turmoil in a background of external conflict. Both news reportage and word-of-mouth narratives of virtually unrestricted access to Canada will most certainly exacerbate an already troubling situation.

 

Where it is known that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of Hezbollah and Hamas, both listed terrorist groups in Canada, have located themselves within the country diligently working to defray the social contract, upturning Canadian values and customs, flouting the laws, dividing society in a rampage of intimidation and threats with those in authority barely blinking an eye, preferring to spout assurances, without supporting them with any level of actual control over a deteriorating social contract.

 

 

 

Any foreign national from whatever corner of the world can now appear at the border, declare themselves refugees, swear no illegal, criminal background, and no intention to wreak havoc in Canada, and be allowed entry. Filling out a security questionnaire can be accomplished through a smartphone app. Once in Canada as a refugee claimant, they are entitled to free health care, access to public schools, and work permits. Many among them receive further benefits, including housing and a daily living allowance. As though Canada doesn't have enough homeless and indigent Canadian-born demographics.

 

The federal government's Interim Housing Assistance Program released numbers last year indicating that some claimants receive free meals and hotel rooms costing $224 for each claimant, daily. While awaiting the processing of their claims, even those whose applications may be rejected, can spend several years waiting for their case to be  reviewed by immigration authorities. Yet the Canadian pubic should take heart; heading off hostile intentions to abuse the system is the assurance that entrants will "self-declare that they're here for no good".

 

Border guards no longer have the time to look for "patterns and flags" indicating an individual may pose a potential security threat. Because of the workload, the protocol is reduced to collecting basic personal and biometric data (fingerprints), then releasing refugee claimants to their own recognizance. Canada's backlog of refugees and refugee claimants is at an all-time high with the most recent Statistics Canada figure of 497,443. Back in 2015, when the Liberals under Justin Trudeau took power that number stood at 16,058.

 

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers greet refugees as they arrive on March 25, 2023 at the Roxham Road border crossing in Champlain, New York following the closing of the crossing the previous day (AFP / Lars Hagberg)

 

Over 100,000 'irregular' border crossers comprised of foreign nationals crossing illegally into Canada to declare asylum since 2017 have gained entry to await a final ruling of their application claims. A record number of foreign students claimed asylum last year timed as their study visa lapsed, amounting to 20,245 international students claiming asylum; an even higher number is anticipated for this year. 

 

There are approximately 8,500 frontline employees with the Canada Border Services Agency, a number that has not risen since 2012, back when a public service cut took place and CBSA lost 1,000 employees. That number of CBSA frontline workers have exponentially more work to do in carrying out their duties, at this time, given the spike in refugee claimants and irregular (illegal) border crossings.  

"The technology that we see the CBSA putting in place is all about self-declaration -- the refugee  claimant doing everything on their own because we simply don't have the staff to do the proper interviews and do what we did previously."

"[Canada's borders are increasingly being stripped of the] human element."

Mark Weber 

 

 

Canada's Surging Illegal Migrant Population

"I'm not going to sugar-coat it, we believe there's 500,000 illegal immigrants currently spread across Canada and these individuals are benefiting from taxpayer-funded services."

"The federal government is choosing to disregard this number and that's a real problem."

"These illegal migrants must be taken into account, as every province is feeling the pressure of Ottawa's mismanagement of the immigration system."

Alberta Immigration Minister Joseph Schow 

Illegal migrants claiming refugee status   True North

 

Illegal immigration in Canada is not taken seriously by the federal government and Alberta's Immigration Minister urges the imperative that Ottawa stop ignoring the problem that has wide repercussions across the country in drawing social support resources from the Canadian taxpaying public to those present in Canada illegally in numbers large enough to have a truly disturbing effect in finite services. From medical care to social housing and the growing  use of food banks, to growing unemployment among young Canadians, the presence of too many new immigrants, refugees and illegal migrants is producing a deleterious economic and human resources impact.

 

Infrastructure and public services, points out MPP Schow, are under great strain across the country. Federal officials, he urges, must account for the estimated number of undocumented migrants in Canada in view of the need to set immigration targets for the coming year. Recently, federal officials themselves acknowledged a need to mitigate problems associated with too many people arriving in too short time-spans, drawing on the country's social systems and creating shortages in housing while over-burdening an already-strained medical/health system. Millions of new arrivals were welcomed in the past several years. 

 

Ottawa projects a 19 percent reduction in temporary arrivals, and eight percent drop in permanent resident admissions in the next three years, through a bolstered immigration level plan. The government has moved to cap non-permanent resident numbers in Canada below five percent of the population. A skeptical Schow feels such efforts are likely to fall short of a sufficient adjustment to make a difference. "If they're leaving out this huge chunk of data (the issue of illegal immigration) how can they set real targets?"

A screengrab from an RCMP video shows people crossing the Manitoba border into Canada. Photograph: Jason Franson/AP

 

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada disclosed in a briefing note a year ago that the number of undocumented migrants could be as high as 500,000, while at the same time admitting that the exact number is unknown. About 114,373 irregular border crossers petitioned to remain in Canada, according o the federal government, between February 2017 and June of 2025. Lack of reliably hard figures on illegal immigration all the more reason for Ottawa to diminish its intake of migrants.

 

58 percent of Canadians, according to a recent poll, feel that mass deportations have become a necessity to curb the number of people now living illegally in Canada. The province of Alberta has led the country in inter-provincial migration and overall population growth in recent years, Immigration Minister Schow pointed out, with the province's population having swelled by some 200,000 last year and continuing on through 2025. A situation that has gone well beyond hampering individuals in Alberta achieving upward mobility. 

 

"The fact that [the federal government is unaware of the precise number of undocumented migrants] they don't have an exact, or close to exact, number just shows again how badly they've lost control of the system." 

"People around the world rightly see us as a beacon of hope and opportunity ... and for that exact reason, we have to be mindful that we're growing our population in a way that's strategic." 

Alberta Minister of Immigration and Jobs, Economy and Trade   

 

Victimized Palestinian Refugees

"[The spike in terrorism  happens] in part because of, over $6 billion in U.S., Canada, and European Union aid given to the Palestinian Authority [PA] and the United Nations Relief Works Agency [UNRWA] since 2008."

"The PA invests a substantial share of its budget, and hence of this foreign aid, on inciting terrorism, on glorifying terrorism and on financially rewarding terrorism."

Henry Kopel, (retired) U.S. Federal Prosecutor

"[We believe that] the unfortunate but glaring reality here is this: Decades of negotiations, agreements, promises, warnings, moral appeals, and temporary aid suspensions all have done nothing to reduce or prevent the Palestinian Authority's relentless commitment to inciting, glorifying, and financially rewarding acts of terrorism committed against innocent Israelis."

The Abraham Accord Peace Initiative

Terror attack in a synagogue in Jerusalem: This evening at around 8:30pm local time, a terrorist arrived at a synagogue in the Neve Ya'akov boulevard in Jerusalem and proceeded to shoot at a number of people in the area   Israeli Police Photo

 

Spontaneous, erratic, random terrorist attacks can take place anywhere, at any time in Israel, incited by a Palesltinian leadership commitment to convincing Palestinians that they are victims of Israeli aggression. It is a message that has a much wider audience as well, through a clever institutionalized program of 'public relations' propaganda painting Israel and Jews who support Israel, as illegal 'occupiers' of their own Biblical-era ancestral geography in the Middle East. 

The hugely aggressive and highly successful strategy used by the Palestinian Authority in what is called the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and their sectarian counterparts, Hamas in Gaza, a Western-acknowledged terrorist group has had little difficulty initiating a Western-popularized sanctions regimen popularly called the BDS Movement, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions isolationist move against Israel. 

 

Unions and Academic institutions in particular have taken to the BDS program with great enthusiasm, all too willing to endorse the slander that Israel is actively engaged in blocking a peace agreement that would lead the way to a formally internationally recognized Palestinian state. The PA and its cohorts smear Israel with refusing to negotiate in good faith for a peace agreement, while in reality at the negotiating table Israel has time and again offered all the conditions demanded by the PA only to have them back away.

 

Palestinians celebrate a Jerusalem terror attack that killed seven Israelis near a synagogue, in Gaza City, January 27, 2023. (Mahmud Hams/AFP)

 

Israel has been forced by Palestinian Authority intransigence over negotiations and the PA's institutionalized teaching of young Palestinians from grade school forward through school curricula, social media, television and news networks that Jews are their enemies and there is no finer future for an aspiring Palestinian hero than to conspire to murder Jews. Through such achievements as delivering death to Jews, the perpetrators receive celebrity status, their families are given generous financial pensions..

 

These acts of terrorism are excused by Western allies of both the PA and Israel as inevitable, a people victimized and frustrated, fighting for their human rights. The murder of Jewish Israelis, from young children to adults to elders to soldiers and police fail to impact the conscience of the world community which has grown comfortable viewing Jews and Israelis as having the upper hand, convincing them that their sympathy is rightfully placed with the Palestinian 'victims' of Israeli 'apartheid'.

 

Should Jews venture by misadventure into a West Bank village or city (cities called 'refugee camps'), their lives are immediately endangered. No Jews may live among Arabs in the West Bank, whereas several million Arabs live in Israel as citizens with equal rights to Jews. Palestinian Arabs sit in the Israeli Knesset (parliament), are appointed judges, their youth attend Israeli universities, medical practitioners practise out of Israeli hospitals.

 

In the Jewish apartheid state, Druze, Bedouin, Arabs, Christian, Baha'i and a host of other non-Jews have citizenship with all the rights associated with that status. Most non-Jewish Israeli citizens, including Palestinians have no wish to live under PA rule, preferring to remain in Israel which speaks volumes about the assurances of justice and security guaranteed to all. Still, among those living in the West Bank, in Gaza and in Israel itself, Palestinians are readily convinced by their leaders that their finest calling is as a martyr in the 'struggle' against the 'oppressor'.

 

While the Palestinian Authority continues to reward terrorism; Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said outright that nothing could induce him or the PA to stop what is called 'pay-for-slay', which says all that is needed to fully understand how much of a 'partner-for-peace' Israel has in the current Palestinian administration -- and it has never been any different under any previous leader. In effect, every Western power that sanctimoniously helps fund the PA in the assumption they are helping the Palestinians is complicit in their terrorist actions and the death of Jews. 

This is no secret. The evidence is blatantly available, even boasted of. Media in the West play deliberately into the hands of the PA media machine. Headlines never fail to emphasize the latest news from the canted perspective of the 'Palestinian cause'. When Israel Defence Forces defensively cause the death of an armed terrorist who has just killed Israelis, news headlines blare: the IDF kills a Palestinian overlooking the cause and effect.

The world -- certainly not the United Nations, and much less so, the UNRWA arm of the UN specific to the Palestinian 'situation' has no interest in removing the identification of 'refugees' from a people who left the territory in favour of returning once assembled Arab armies destroyed the nascent Israeli state after refusing the UN Partition plan for side-by-side states, Israeli and Palestinian. Remaining refugees consolidates their victimhood status.

There is no expectation that the Palestinians will be civilized, will develop the core infrastructure of a responsible state, will be capable and amenable of administering itself in a manner expected of a sovereign state with full employment for its population and a standard of living that would not include international handouts in pity of a marginalized population. 

 

The time has long passed for Palestinians to be proud of themselves as responsible, independent people. It's never too late but that time won't come as long as they're being coddled with no expectations of civilized behaviour, encouraging their victimhood.

Israeli forces, paramedic reach the site of terror attack, image via Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/ Getty Images

S.O.S. Save Our Souls! Is There No One There???

"I last spoke with the boat's captain on December 18 and he told me that at least 17 people on board had died due to a lack of food and water."

"They have only been able to drink water when it rains."

"Please tell me, I just want to know if my family is alive or dead. We all want to see our families, that is all we request from the world. Just help us."

Sham Shur Alom, Rohingya refugee in Malaysia

"Several reports indicate dozens of people have already died during this ordeal, while survivors are hungry and thirsty without access to food and water and suffering from sickness."

United Nations' refugee agency 

"Father, please send a boat or I will jump into the ocean. I can't tolerate the pain and struggle anymore. There is no food or water to drink. People are drinking salt water. People are close to dying and mental breakdown. They're going to bite each other."

"Baba. I don't know why I am here. My teeth are dry from the lack of drinking water. Please do whatever is humanly possible for you."

Mosharrof Ullha, to his father Ata Ullha, Rohingya, Cox's Bazar Refugee Camp, Bangladesh

"We urge the Government of India to urgently coordinate and cooperate with other regional governments on the search and rescue operations of Rohingya refugees who are currently stranded in Indian waters with no medical support, food and water"    Amnesty India

The world of the unwanted homeless is ever on the move, hoping to find surcease from their stateless status, their unwanted presence, their suffering and their timeless dilemma. They aspire to live, to have a future, they are not economic migrants but refugees. As it happens, refugees who are Muslim, whom the Myanmar military expunged violently from the country where they were living. Originally from Bangladesh, the Rohingya lived for generations in Myanmar. But Buddhism and Islam oppose one another.

 

Living for years since their expulsion from Myanmar on the border in Bangladesh in an immense squalid refugee camp teeming with refugees whom no one wants responsibility for, there are those who dream of escape, of finding a new life and opportunity elsewhere in the world where they will be accepted, where human aspirations to belong and to succeed in life can be found. And in following that dream they sacrifice themselves to chance and fortune, and sometimes lose.

A boat stranded for close to three weeks in the Indian Ocean is desperate for rescue. So far a dozen of the Rohingya refugees populating the wooden craft open to the air, directionless, have died. With no humanitarian intervention from nearby nations fears are that more people will die in the next few days. And the unthinkable, that the  hopeful refugees on board will all perish from neglect by those who could mount a rescue. Indonesia, the nation with the largest Muslim population globally has seen fit not to respond.

Predictably, India, with the world's third largest minority population of Muslims has no wish to acquire more people of the faith its own majority Hindu population is hostile to. Late November saw the open wooden boat set off from Bangladesh for Malaysia, yet another majority Muslim population, with over 150 asylum seekers aboard. On December 4 its engine failed, leaving the vessel to drift at sea, its food and water supplies steadily diminishing.

Most of the people on the ship had set out to meet family in Malaysia, anxious to flee the sprawling Cox's Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh with its hundreds of thousands of hopeless people languishing there for the past five years. The boat captain refused to allow those who have managed to make contact with the boat by satellite phone, to speak with their relatives. Open to the elements, conditions on the boat are unspeakably urgent.

The Indian navy and coast guard say no information about the adrift ship has reached them; wide-spread media coverage of the crisis aside. "We have no information about the issue",  a spokesperson for the Indian navy responded, to a query. To the present, it is believed that approximately two thousand Rohingya refugees have opted to risk a sea voyage in 2022 as conditions in the refugee camps both in Myanmar and Bangladesh continue to deteriorate.

Although Sri Lanka's navy rescued a boat of 104 Rohingya a week ago, other nations have no wish to encourage the mass flow of people by intervening to offer support. Bangladesh, the Muslim country from which the Rohingya originated has not seen fit to integrate them back into its society as a Muslim-to-Muslim responsibility. Nor have Indonesia or Malaysia recognized their religious responsibility to embrace fellow Muslims.

Rohingya refugees sit on a wooden boat as Indonesian officials conduct evacuation at the Krueng Geukueh port in Lhokseumawe, Aceh, Indonesia, on December 31, 2021.

Fachrul Reza / Xinhua via Getty Images

"Many more will die soon if they are not rescued, due to dehydration."

"We have approached the Indian coast guard and the Thai and Indonesian governments."

"None of them responded."

Mohammed Rezuwan Khan, Rohingya refugee, Cox's Bazar

The Land of the Free and the Brave

"He [Anne Frank's father Otto Frank] had means, he had contacts, he crossed every 't', he dotted every 'i', and he still couldn't get in."

"What if [Anne] had got in? Would she be alive now?"

"I always know that I'm going to be reminded of what I don't know. We share with the audience our process of discovery."

"We let in 225,000 refugees from Nazi terror. That's more than any other sovereign nation. Good? Yeah. But even if we'd filled out the minuscule quotas we'd have got in five times as many. So the grade is an F. We failed."

"We locked the film and then unlocked it 150 times to pull out an adjective that felt like a thumb on a scale, to add a qualifying 'perhaps' or 'some said'."

Ken Burns, U.S. historical documentarian

 

"There is a sense that we liberated the camps, we defeated the Nazis, so we helped do something about the Holocaust."

"Or if we didn't do more, it's because we had no idea what was happening. And we found that to be completely not the case."

"I was surprised by the scope and depth of antisemitism in America. I shouldn't have been, but I was. In a crisis, one would like to think there would be an outcry: forget the quotas, let people come in, it's now or never.. But that's definitely not what happened."

"There are events that have happened since 2015 that give us a deeper understanding of the history. When it comes to authoritarianism, white supremacy, bigotry and xenophobia, we're trending in the wrong direction, and the pace is accelerating in a truly disturbing way."

Lynn Novick, co-director of three-part, six-hour documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust

The largest diaspora of Jewry worldwide resides in the United States. Only Israel itself, the ancient homeland of the world's Jewish population reclaimed, has a greater population of Jews. Other large populations are scattered throughout Europe and Canada in Western democracies, while Jews continue to live in smaller numbers in more obscure parts of the world's geography. Many have integrated with their host populations, but almost everywhere Jews face discrimination. A bigotry peculiar to a hostile attitude reserved for Jews and Jews alone. 

That Jew-centric bigotry had undergone a mute period directly following the Holocaust. With the modern re-creation of the State of Israel and its ingathering of Jews fleeing persecution in their places of birth that never quite came to terms with the presence of Jews among them whose human rights were not quite entitled in the opinion of the prevailing majority, including those who were expelled in their hundreds of thousands from Arab lands where they had lived for a thousand years and more. Jew-hate is on a roll, surfacing and swelling in our modern era of the 21st Century.

The United States has always been fond of portraying itself as a nation comprised of refugees, proud to open its generous arms to people fleeing their homelands as a result of persecution, of war, endemic poverty and government neglect and hostility. Jews have lived in the United States and flourished there for centuries, despite a vibrant scene of suspicion and outright bigotry. It occurred to American documentary-producer Ken Burns that he would accept a 2015 invitation extended to him by the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington for a film documenting America's Holocaust response.

Ken Burns has a well-established and admired reputation for his deeply researched films about historical events in the United States. He was named "Mr. America" in recognition of his lifelong feature productions, viewed as an unofficial national historian whose work tens of millions of viewers are familiar with, in scrupulously researched backgrounders on The Civil War, Hemingway, Benjamin Franklin, Prohibition, Baseball, Jazz, Country Music and the Vietnam War, among others. At age 69 the New Yorker remains involved and active in his trade.

Voyage of the M.S. St.Louis

The emblematic, symbolic Statue of Liberty with its dedicatory poetic invitation: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", is the America that its citizens have huge pride in, themselves coming from generations of refugee entrants to the great United States of America. In the research and portrayal of the role of America in the Holocaust, a grimly ironic invitation, given reality -- in its presence as a presiding image of the three-part series.

The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 led to strict and racist immigration quotas favouring western Europeans. The Act a result of a xenophobic wave and anti-Communist paranoia. The U.S. State Department peopled then as now by discreet, elite antisemites, took pains, when Hitler came to power to ensure that quotas for refugees out of Germany and Italy would be unfilled. Congress defeated a 1939 bill to save 20,000 German Jewish children. "We do rally as a nation to defeat fascism. We just don't rally as a nation to rescue the victims of fascism", one historian in the series declares.

 

America in the Holocaust

Of 32 nations represented at the 1938 conference on refugees that took place in Evian, France, the Dominican Republic stood out as having singularly pledged to admit a greater number of refugees. Tens of millions of Americans silently applauded statements reeking of antisemitism uttered by Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, American heroes that could say no wrong. The refusal to allow in Jewish refugees hoping to escape fascist Germany and what inevitably lay in store for them, was applauded by a huge segment of the American population. A Fortune magazine poll dated July 1938 saw fewer than one in 20 favouring an increase in immigration quotas to allow refugees from Nazism to come to America.

According to an even larger demographic, Jews exercised too much power in the United States. The Holocaust and its reality was downplayed with deliberation in fear that once President Roosevelt brought America into the Second World Wear, American troops would refuse to risk their lives to save those of Jews. "The first time I was doing it [delivering the voiceover script] I was breaking down and sobbing at some of the things", admits Ken Burns. 

 

America in the Holocaust

The Afghan Refugees Canada Left Behind

"Those refugees face an uncertain and volatile future in neighbouring countries, and Canada is here to help them as well."

"In an initial effort to alleviate the emerging humanitarian crisis in the region, Canada will build on our earlier special immigration program to welcome over 20,000 vulnerable Afghan refugees in total."

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, September 2021

 

"The defence team remains ready to support the whole-of-government effort to get these Afghan nationals out of harm's way."

"The Canadian Armed Forces will provide additional flights as required, and DND will continue to support the vetting process and advise on contingency plans for a range of scenarios as our government monitor the evolving security situation in Afghanistan."

Then-Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan, August 2021

 

"Yes, I'm a bit frustrated, I'm happy that they actually acted, and that there's a process in place. But that process needs to be considerably accelerated or we're really going to be faced with a disaster, which I don't think any Canadian would be willing to accept."

"There needs to be more communication with these legitimate Canadian organizations that are connected to the Afghans who supported us in Kandahar, Kabul and across the country so that we can communicate the plan to them and speed the process,"

(retired) Major-General Denis Thompson, commander, Canadian troops in Afghanistan, 2008-2009

 

"We could have done so much more. It's hard for me just to think about those that I know that are still there. What do I say to them now?"

"What are all the other veterans going say to their interpreters? Sorry? Good luck?"

Retired corporal Dave Morrow, Canadian-Afghan Interpreters group

Afghans from northern provinces who fled their homes due to the fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security forces take refuge in a public park in Kabul, August 13, 2021.  ©2021 AP Photo/Rahmat Gul

On the return of the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban to power in Afghanistan in August of 2021, Canada pledged it would relocate 20,000 refugees. This is the government of Justin Trudeau's Liberals. This is the prime minister of Canada who called a surprise election the very day that Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. Never one to miss an opportunity, during the election campaign that followed, it was stated rhat the government was prepared to set aside $350-million to resettle Afghan refugees.

And then it promised even more; that the number of refugees from Afghanistan would be doubled to 40,000 once the Liberals were returned with a minority government last September. The refugees would primarily consist of those citizens of Afghanistan who worked as contractors in various capacities for Canada; as interpreters, consular employees and such. And would also include Afghans escaping the fear of violence under the Taliban, fleeing to neighbouring countries for haven.

 

Evacuees termed Canadian Entitled Persons sit in a Royal Canadian Air Force C-177 Globemaster III transport plane for their flight to Canada on Aug. 23. Photo by Canadian Armed Forces/Handout via Reuters/File

Evacuation efforts for those who had given aid to Canadian troops had barely begun and suddenly came to a crashing halt in late August once American forces summarily pulled out, leaving Kabul's airport in total chaos. While other countries sent in  helicopters or armed patrols in evacuating refugees, Canada's department of foreign affairs informed Canadian-linked evacuees they were on their own, to find transport to the airport.

Through efforts fraught with violence and danger those refuge-seeking Afghans who had been promised Canadian haven, appeared at the airport only to be turned away by soldiers; some captured on video ignored by Canadian troops even while they held aloft their approval letters from Canada's immigration department along with their passports, begging to pass through to board the aircraft they were promised would take them to safety.

These were Afghans and their families who had risked their future to work alongside foreign troops in a NATO-US-led mission who were left to their own devices despite having been promised for years that their service would be repaid with safety in Canada. Canadian government officials ignored the urging of volunteers intent on saving those Afghans whose safety was compromised by their having committed to working with Canadian diplomatic offices and military personnel.

Now figures that have been released show that a mere 2,385 Afghan nationals who had given assistance to Canada over the 13-year mission in Afghanistan actually arrived in Canada, out of over 6,000 applications that had been approved for immigration. The thousands of interpreters and civilian contractors employed by the Canadian Armed Forces had forwarded applications to Canada's Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship department as "Government-Assisted Refugees" under special immigration measures.

IRCC had received 14,380 applications. Government approved 6,184 of those applications for relocation, and of that total only 2,385 were relocated to Canada. The Afghan security guards, embassy staff and fixers working for Canada were considered 'traitors' by the Taliban, and as such the pressure to leave before they were discovered and summarily executed qas of utmost importance. As of March 23, according to numbers posted by IRCC, 9,560 Afghan refugees arrived in Canada across all immigration streams and programs.

Afghan citizens numbering 4,325 arrived under government or privately-sponsored refugee programs. This Liberal government talks a good line about how welcoming Canada is to immigration from abroad and how responsive it is to to world crises leading to vast increases in the world's refugee crises. It makes promises along with grandiose statements of accountability, yet the final analysis of actual accomplishments leave much to be desired.

Internally displaced Afghans from northern provinces, who fled their home due to fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel, take refuge in a public park Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Aug. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Russians: 'You Will See Our Faces ... Not Our Backs'

"You have been told that this flame will bring liberation to Ukraine's people. But the Ukrainian people are free."

"Donetsk, which I have visited dozens of times? Where I looked in people's faces, in their eyes? Artyoma Street, where I strolled with friends? The Donbas Arena, where I rooted for our boys together with Ukrainian lads at the European Championships? Shcehrbakov Park, where I drank with friends when our boys lost?"

"Luhansk, where the mother of my best friend is buried? Where his father also rests?"

"Many of you have visited Ukraine. Many of you have relatives here. Some might have studied at Ukrainian universities and befriended Ukrainians. You know our character; you know our people, and you know our principles. You know what we value."

"So stop and listen to yourselves, to the voice of reason, to the voice of common sense."

"The Ukrainian people want peace, as does their government. We know for sure that we don't need the war. Not a Cold War, not a hot war. Not a hybrid one. But if these forces attack us, if they try to take our country away from us, our freedom, our lives, the lives of our children, we will defend ourselves.Not attack, but defend ourselves."

"And when you attack, you will see our faces. Not our backs, our faces."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an appeal to Russia

The mass exodus of refugees from Ukraine to the eastern edge of the European Union showed no signs of stopping Monday as civilians flee Russia’s burgeoning war, with the United Nations estimating that more than half a million people have already escaped. Here, people wait in freezing conditions to board a bus bound for a refugee centre in Przemyśl, Poland, on Monday. (Bryan Woolston/Reuters)

 

Ukrainians are fleeing their country. In staggering numbers, on their way to becoming a full-scale refugee crisis in Europe not seen since the Second World War. A crisis that has been the result of Vladimir Putin's decision to mount a full-scale invasion on his neighbour, knowing full well that imposing the threat and the reality of countless deaths and destruction will inevitably cause hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge elsewhere than where he has directed his military to strike.

And since he has directed his military to strike wholesale throughout the length and breadth of Ukraine, the response has been disastrous; refugee numbers are exploding from day to day. Several days earlier an estimated 368,000 Ukrainians fled to the borders of their European neighbours; Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia and Romania, with thousands more desperately attempting to forge their way through clogged borders.

People, frightened and vulnerable, waiting for hours in the cold, in cars, or on foot; with them the bare few belongings they could manage to assemble in their panic to escape. A 14-kilometre-long backlog was assembled at the crossing into Poland two days ago. Some people had been waiting for 40 hours in -18C night-time temperatures.

 

Ukrainian refugees are seen at the temporary refugee centre in a local primary school at Tiszabecs, eastern Hungary on Monday. (Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images)

 

In 2015 over a million refugees flooded Europe's borders, coming from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, triggering a continent-wide crisis with some countries willing to accept some refugees and others adamant that they would not. And those that would not take in Muslim refugees fleeing the countries of their birth, beset by horrendous violence from Islamist forces and their very own leaders, are now opening their borders wide to Ukrainian refugees.

Countries such as Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, where their borders had been hardened on that earlier 2015 occasion, assailed by waves of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa are preparing to welcome Ukrainian refugees into their fold. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser stated Germany was ready to offer Poland and other Eastern European countries support in the handling of the sudden Ukrainian refugee surge.

Up to five million of Ukraine's total 44 million population could become refugees, warns the United Nations, should Russia's attacks on Ukraine continue. For the most part it is women, children and the elderly who mass at the borders, since Ukrainian men have been barred from leaving, in light of President Zelensky having called on Ukrainian males to take up arms in defence of their country.

To complicate matter still further, a data-wiping software has hit a Ukrainian border control station processing people trying to enter Romania, according to a cybersecurity expert. "It's massively hitting the border control. They are processing people with pen and pencil." 

Poland is setting up reception centres along the contiguous 480-kilometre border with Ukraine, offering food, medical care and needed social welfare resources. Thousands of soldiers from the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division have been deployed to assist. In 15 hours on Saturday alone, 45,200 Ukrainian refugees crossed into Poland.

Refugees fill a warehouse in Poland after escaping Ukraine.