by Doris Strub Epstein

OTTAWA IGNORING MOST VULNERABLE REFUGEES IN RUSH TO BRING IN SYRIAN MIGRANTS

In the rush to fulfill their election promise to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees by year’s end, the new Liberal government is ignoring the most-at risk refugees; the non Muslims targeted for genocide by ISIS.  They  can more than fulfill the quota. At the top of the threatened and persecuted list are the Yazidis, then  the Chaldo-Assyrian Christians. But all the non Muslim minorities,  such as the Mandaens, the Bahai, the Assyrians, are targeted. The former Conservative government promised to make  these  minorities a priority for resettlement.

In the bitter debate about security, there is no risk of terrorists hiding themselves among these refugees.  Nor would there be integration problems.

Jewish groups in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg voiced their concerns.  “We want to make sure the Yazidis aren’t forgotten” said Bob Freedman, former head of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg.”  The Jewish community has raised $120,000 to sponsor and resettle in Winnipeg at least four Yazidi families. Montreal businessman, Steve Maman, founder of the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq is raising money to rescue some of the thousands of women captured by ISIS and used as sex slaves, because” no one else is helping them”.

Rananah Gemeiner of Toronto’s Canadian Friends for Yazidis was adamant.  “The Yazidis deserve priority as refugees.  They are an ancient, peaceful, monotheistic people.  Five thousand were murdered by ISIS last August and 7,000 children and young women are enslaved. Thousands fled to camps where they are abused by the Muslim authorities in charge, denied food and medicine. The world is abandoning them.”

The attack on these people simply because of their religion, hits close to home for Jews.  Comparisons are made to the widespread rejection of European Jews by Western countries during WW11.  But the most obvious difference between the two is there was no conspiracy of Jews  in the l930’s of daily threats of attack on civilians on several continents.  The threats of harm to  the West from ISIS and radical Islamists is  real – a clear and ever-present danger.

The bitter debate about security is complicated and obfuscated by political correctness.   It is impossible to screen the Syrian migrants one hundred percent.   Most have no papers and for those that do, the only way is to check with the now defunct Syrian authorities.  Those who have Syrian passports may very well be false.

Gerard Van Kessel,  former director general of the government’s refugee resettlement program said ,”there’s no way” the government can meet a December 31st deadline “without shortcuts”. If a terrorist arrives in Canada “he will disappear and end up in the woodwork and the next time we hear of him, either here or in the States, will be because he’s been nabbed or because of some other violent act that will make it all apparent that a mistake was made.”

Integration in the host country is another worry,   as evident in the resistance of immigrants from Muslim countries to adapt to their new homes in Europe.   The Organization of Islamic Cooperation , a bloc of 56 Muslim countries plus the Palestinian Authority, has decreed, “Muslims should not  be marginalized or attempted to be assimilated, but should be accommodated.  Reep Tayip Erdogen, President of Turkey said that pressuring Muslims to assimilate in the West “is a crime against humanity.”
In view of the genocide being enacted now against the non Muslim minorities in the Middle East, the government needs to prioritize these imperilled peoples before they are annihilated.  Gemeiner reported that she has called John McCallum, Minister of Immigration and Refugees for an “immediate emergency meeting regarding the Yezidis deserving priority refugee consideration along with the Christians and other groups under attack.”  She has not received an answer.