Canada welcomes in first group of planned 25000 Syrian refugees
Literally. Justin Trudeau, the new Prime Minister of Canada, was there when 163 Syrian refugees touched down in Canada to start their new lives.
However, the government still plans to have the first 10,000 refugees brought to Canada by the end of December.
Maryam and Nore Kasmeih wait for Syrian refugees at the airport.
Trudeau has pledged to resettle 25,000 Syrians in Canada. The family fled Syria for Lebanon a year ago. The former Conservative government had declined to resettle more Syrian refugees, despite the haunting image of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach.
“It’s like a Christmas gift to us”, she said of their arrival.
“Canada’s programmes are an expression of support to Syrian refugees but importantly for us they are a demonstration too of solidarity to countries in the region hosting more than 4 million Syrian refugees”, United Nations refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing in Geneva.
McCallum urges others to do what they can to make the refugees welcome. One refugee arriving with his family at the airport was heard telling the Prime Minister through an interpreter, “Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise”.
“Tonight is a wonderful night where we get to show a plane-load of new Canadians what Canada is all about, but we get to show the world how to open our hearts and welcome in people who are fleeing extraordinary hard situations”, Trudeau said in a speech captured by the New York Times. The pair said they had made arrangements with airport security to have the items -and several hundreds more bags – brought to the designated terminal where the government flight landed.
He suggests dozens more planeloads of refugees will arrive in the next few weeks to meet the target.
“We are saying: ‘OK, we’re ready, send us some cases, ‘” she said.
Louisa Taylor, director of Refugee613 in Ottawa, which is helping coordinate resettlement in the nation’s capital, said: “The demand for refugees far outstrips the supply”.
“The humanitarian need is great and time is short to help welcome refugees arriving on our doorstep”, said Luc Jobin, executive vice president and chief financial officer of CN. Once in Beirut, they struggled to find work, she added.
“There are a lot of moving parts to coordinate and it’s very hard to plan when you don’t know numbers, you don’t know dates”, he said.