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Sunday, November 10, 2024

Today's News: Refugees, and kindness

Remember this? 

That terrible photo of Alan Kurdi, age 3, washed up on a beach in Turkey when he and his family tried to escape Syria in 2015. That little drowned child is one of the main reasons Harper lost the 2015 election. Canadians were saddened and shocked to find out that maybe we could have saved him, because his aunt lived in Coquitlam. I have never forgotten that photo, and neither has the rest of Canada. 

 And here's another one, from two years later:


A luckier child finds help from a kind RCMP as her family runs across the border in 2017, escaping from Trump to claim refugee status. These types of irregular border crossing have been shut down now, apparently, though I suspect we'll see an increase in desperate people now that Trump is president again. 
And I expect that once again, Canadians will react with kindness.  Today I saw this story:
CBC writes:
As the possibility of mass deportations looms following Donald Trump's re-election on Tuesday, border towns like the City of Cornwall are preparing for a potential influx of asylum seekers...
"... immigration is what Canada is known for. We'll have more people that are coming and they will work. They will get jobs, and they'll commit to society like it's always been."
..."We're probably going to have more officers on the ground, more roving patrols," says Sgt. Charles Poirier of the RCMP.
"And depending on the scale of it all we might have to rent a space, buy some buildings like we did in the past, buy some more police cruisers, charge some buses like we've done in the past."
Cornwall Mayor Justin Towndale anticipates an increase in asylum seekers in the coming months before Trump takes office in January and is urging the federal government for more funding to handle the expected surge.
..."We're happy to do it again, we're ready to do it again and we have enough experience to do it again, but I would once again reiterate my calls to the federal government to help us out in that regard. We're still looking for assistance with the cost that we incurred at an administrative level," said Towndale.
"We're just asking for our fair share and the federal government has been very, very, very generous to cities like Toronto and Ottawa and much, much larger municipalities."
Martha Woods, executive director with the Eastern Ontario Training Board, which offers employment services to newcomers, says local groups such as theirs are ready to provide all the necessary services.
"From housing, to schooling, to legal aid, clothing to household items, there's a lot that goes into it," said Woods.
"It has happened before so if it happens again, we're definitely ready for it. It will be a conversation around the table at our next local immigration partnership meeting in terms of if we do see that influx we will be ready with boots on the ground again."
The typical picture of "refugees" as poor displaced people won't be correct now: Apparently Tom Hanks said he would move to Canada if Trump won. Welcome, Tom!
Back in the day, Canada willingly took in 50,000+ US draft dodgers during the Vietnam War in the 1960s. I worked with one fellow at the newspaper, he hadn't seen his parents in more than a decade, until Jimmy Carter declared the amnesty in 1977. 
Refugees get an undeservedly bad rap:



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— Jenn the Queen (@jennb.bsky.social) November 8, 2024 at 5:08 PM
This is startling:

For those still believing the election of the Tangerine tyrant to the south has no bearing on our lives in the great white north I'd like you to take a look at this picture taken today in downtown #HamOnt.

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— The Bearded Giant (@stewfromhamont.bsky.social) November 9, 2024 at 1:17 PM

I have a friend in Hamilton and through her, have followed this - I think many people have no understanding of how active many groups that morphed into the Freedom Convoy were from about 2018 on - riffing on les Gilets Jaunes out of France.

— Janis La Couvée (@lacouvee.bsky.social) November 9, 2024 at 7:38 PM
But please, I don't want to hear anybody assert that we don't have room for any more people:




And I don't want to hear anybody say we can't afford to help refugees: Moving on, here's some great news:
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