"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   

 

Canadian Immigration, Refugee and Migrant Intake

"While most observers attribute the persistent concern with the numbers of refugees to economic concerns and housing challenges, the survey looks at the extent to which Canadians trust immigrants and refugees and finds that amongst those Canadians who feel that there are too many immigrants, the level of trust in refugees is especially low."

"This may imply that concerns over domestic intergroup tensions may be a more important factor in concern with levels than has been previously acknowledged." 

Analysis of national Leger poll

Protesters at the Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in Brampton, Ontario.  Photograph: Nick Lachance/Toronto Star/Getty Images

 

"Intergroup tensions", as for example Canadian Hindus versus Canadian Sikhs with their traditions of suspicion and distrust, acting out within Canada in viral events of dangerous dimensions, the two solitudes coming to blows, endangering the communities and bringing international attention to their divisions. It is, in fact, the communities' propensities to have among them cliques that also engage in illegal, criminal activities domestically in Canada. But above all, the ongoing agenda of the Khalistani Sikhs who agitate for a separate Sikh state to be divided from India's interior. Canada's worst terrorist assault was one committed by British Columbia Khalistanis who placed a bomb aboard Air India Flight 182 that killed all 329 people aboard, in 1982.

 

Canada has a population of Sri Lankans, among them members of the Tamil Tigers who in the past agitated for their own separatist state, committing violent crimes in Sri Lanka in support of their sovereign aspirations against the country's military and members of government. Canadian Sri Lankans belonging to the Tamil Tigers promulgated their violent terrorist propaganda, drawing Canada involuntarily into a debate roiling another country entirely, until the Tigers were delivered a crushing blow that devastated their numbers in Sri Lanka and put their designs to rest.

 

Propaganda billboards in the region of Sri Lanka controlled by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, April 22, 2007. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

 

But wait: the current Liberal government of prime minister Mark Carney elevated a former sympathizer of the Tigers, MP Gary Anandasangaree, to the important Cabinet post of Public Safety Minister. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, along with the Tamil Tigers and World Tamil Movement, are listed terrorist groups in Canada. Minister Anandasangaree took the step of recusing  himself from anything to do with these two groups, as Public Safety Minister. But it was discovered, that as a Member of Parliament years previous, he had written a letter in support of a former Tamil Tiger facing deportation from Canada.

 

And nor to overlook the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees brought to Canada during Syria's 14-year sectarian civil war when former regime Shia-Alawite President Bashar al-Assad barrel- and chemical-bombed Syria's Sunni population killing an estimated third of a million Syrians; years that saw half the population of the country internally displaced, and millions more seeking haven abroad. These intake refugees along with a sizeable Palestinian-Canadian population and other Muslim groups in Canada totalling almost two million have made their presence known in ongoing street protests against Israel.

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters chant during a demonstration protesters are calling a "National March for Palestine" near Parliament Hill (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)

 

Since the 2023 October 7 incursion of thousands of Palestinian terrorists from Gaza into southern Israel who embarked on a sadistically savage rampage of rape, mutilation and mass murder, killing 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping another 250 children, women, elderly, foreign farm workers and a number of Israeli IDF members, leading to a military response by the IDF into Gaza to route out Hamas leaders and operatives, Muslim groups in Canada, led primarily by Palestinians living in Canada have harassed Canadian Jews, threatened their security, committed violent criminal acts and behaved in a manner inconsistent with Canadian values and justice. 

"We're trying o probe here whether Canadians do have security concerns that are also driving some of the reticence or hesitation about immigration right now. My conclusion is that that is the case."

"The point of the survey is, there is an issue that we need to pay attention to. If there is a security concern associated with migration right now, it requires some attention and a need to reassure Canadians that our government and the responsible departments are taking care of those issues, are paying attention to those issues if and when they arrive, or where and when they may arise."

"We're seeing the degree of trust expressed in refugees as especially low. And particularly amongst those people who think there are too may immigrants, the trust of refugees is low, lower than it is normally."

"Whether you're born in Canada or not born in Canada, or whether you're a minority or not, this issue around trust, and the perceptions around the global instability, is affecting our perspectives around migration." 

Jack Jedwab, president, chief executive, Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute  

The new poll in question conducted nationally for the Association for Canadian Studies and the Metropolis Institute, found 62 percent of people polled feel Canada is accepting too many people, over double the number that expressed those sentiments  six year earlier. Only 20 percent disagreed, while 19 percent responded they  don't know. Canadians were asked if they think immigrants can be trusted, and the 52 percent of Canadians who said they can, saw 36 percent responding in the negative when the issue is that of refugees being trusted -- 20 percent adamant that immigrants cannot be trusted; 23 percent felt the same about refugees.

 

For the question whether there are too many people coming to Canada, among those who declare there are, 32 percent only, trust immigrants; 28 percent felt they cannot be trusted, and for refugees those numbers were 24 percent trusting; another 32 percent felt they cannot be trusted. And it is immigrants themselves that agree, by 57 percent, that too many immigrants are arriving to Canada, near matching the numbers of non-immigrant responders. Non-white people surveyed saw 61 percent agreeing there are too many immigrants in comparison to 58 percent of white people. 

"That polarization is not based on whether you are yourself an immigrant or you are a minority, it's not. It's transcending that. So the trust issue is a critical factor. It's just not defined by, as I said, your status as an immigrant or non-immigrant or as a minority. Those groups of people are making observations to the same extent across those markers of identity."

"It is important that we properly understand what the factors are underlying the reticence about immigration. So that's where the importance ... is in trying to establish what the concerns are, how significant those concerns are, where those concerns are coming from."

"And then, on that basis, to determine how best to address them rather than dismissing them."

Jack Jedwab 

The Canadian Citizenship Ceremony  -- Still from video

 

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

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

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.

UNHCR Holds the West Hostage to Islamist Terror

The Ramstein military base in Germany has become a makeshift camp for thousands of Afghans  Getty Images

"They [Afghan civilians] really feel like the international community has not stood sufficiently with them."

"There can be all kinds of reasons for people to need to leave [Afghanistan]. But we're trying to assist them where they are."

"We're present in every province and two-thirds of the districts and have a number of partners with which we're working."

"So, we would obviously call on the neighbours to allow those people to be able to seek safety within their countries as well."

Kelly Clements, deputy UN High Commissioner for Refugees 

A woman and child walk between the makeshift tents in Nawabad Farabi-ha camp for internally displaced people in Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan.   UNHCR/Edris Lufti

 

The international community is being chided once again by a representative of the United Nations from an arm concerning itself with the plight of the world's burgeoning refugee populations fleeing conflict, repression, discrimination and outright violent hostility from the executive bodies that govern various corrupt, autocratic, crime-ridden countries. Including the latest to join a long string of persecuted people anxious to escape what fate has ordained for them, Afghanistan.

Iran and Pakistan require the sympathy of the world for their hard luck in bordering Afghanistan. Destinations of desperation for Afghan citizens anxious to escape the notorious and dangerous maladministration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. For many, the loss of their fledgling democratic status, despite endemic corruption, was far preferable to the hardline Islamists who have restored their previous rule through unrelentingly lethal attacks on government, its agents and agencies.

In its previous iteration the Taliban gave haven to al-Qaeda, allowing it the freedom of operation to plot a spectacularly atrocious series of surprise attacks on the United States of America. A hideous attack that spurred the invasion of Afghanistan and the hunting down of al-Qaeda and its Taliban supporters. Even then, the sponsors, trainers, enablers and funders of the Taliban gained the trust of the United States accepting Pakistan's claims that it was a committed partner in combating terrorism.

Sheltering both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Pakistan's Interagency Intelligence group conspired to destroy Afghanistan, even while Washington was generously handing over millions to support the very military that housed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in spitting distance from an elite Pakistan military academy. Both Iran and Pakistan celebrated the return of the Taliban to govern Afghanistan. A return which added fire to the smouldering embers of impoverishment in a country where Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the Taliban hunt down their opponents in constant orgies of slaughter.

 

 

Little wonder Afghan civilians are desperate to escape the clutches of the Taliban; tribal/sectarian minorities are targeted by all three terrorist groups. As are former government elites, government workers, and Afghans who found employment as drivers, interpreters, kitchen staff and other positions with the foreign troops stationed with the NATO-U.S.-led mission to fend off the Taliban and help to incubate democracy in yet another Muslim country.

That great global conciliator, the United Nations, extends yet another humanitarian mission to persuade the West of their obligations to those less fortunate who in absolute fact either admire or venomously detest Western values, among whom are those committed to the jihad of destruction and death visited on the unIslamic world of vice and corruption. That obligation first and foremost, is to help fund Iran and Pakistan, to house and feed the new refugees seeking haven there. Which of course, does not diminish the West's obligation to take in more refugees themselves.

The oil-rich countries of the Middle East; Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Iraq for starters have limitless treasuries. Time for Qatar in particular, Saudi Arabia as well, to step forward and fund their brethren in religious devotion. For is it not so under Islam that there is such a responsibility among Muslims to give aid and succor to suffering co-religionists? All the more so that the bulk of the world's refugees -- from the Middle East to Africa -- flee the violent threat of Islamist terrorist groups pledging allegiance to jihad through membership in Islamic State and al-Qaeda and their offshoots...

 

As for the last dangerously chaotic airlifting efforts by Western nations to bring desperate Afghans to safety in the West, tens of thousands managed to escape during a harrowing week of hopes and expectations both realized and dashed. Many managed to reach haven and security in Europe and North America. Many more were left behind, with no time nor space on aircraft to accommodate their hopes and aspirations to separate from their country of birth for promising new lives. Take more, urges the UNHCR. 

 

The failure through militant Islamism to secure futures for Muslims in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, in Africa where countries as diverse as Kenya, Tanzania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Somalia and others see ongoing deadly attacks by al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates, creates more bedlam, more refugees, and countries suffering the ravages of war and the inability to feed their populations. Islam has become a tired and sick theology, no longer what the faithful proudly claim it to be, a religion of peace. 

 

Bring Us Your Poor, Unskilled, Uneducated, Oppressed ...

"People from all corners of the globe have sought refuge in Canada, people who have started the next chapter of their lives here in Canada,"

"There's another reason that Canada's light shines brightly, and that is the contributions of refugees themselves in so many ways."

"We've seen refugees give back to their new communities and their countries, even during the pandemic."

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marco Mendicino 

A group of Central American migrants rest along the railway track on their way to the United States in Macuspana, Tabasco, Mexico March 25, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Immigration Minister Mendicino made an announcement on June 18 that Canada is proceeding with a new target number of refugees into the country of "protected persons"; refugees and asylum seekers set to be accepted for residence in Canada while their applications for acceptance are being determined. That acceptance for residence is to be extended to their families. In 2020 the number brought into Canada stood at 23,500. For 2021 that number is to rise to 45,000.

 

An estimated 50,000 haven-seekers, migrants declaring themselves 'refugees' entered Canada illegally in the space of two years between 2018 and 2019, numbers that are declining by a wide margin, but still ongoing where people who have entered the United States transit into Canada which has a far more relaxed reputation for accepting migrants' refugee claims. Many of those haven-seekers, are fleeing poverty, crime and conflict in their central American homelands, many seek out better economic prospects.

 

Many are drawn by Canada's generous social support system which they can draw on as soon as they enter Canada. And many of the migrants are unschooled, unskilled and if and when they look for employment, will only be suitable for low-skill work that will leave them in poverty, albeit with the added assistance of social welfare. Finding places for migrants to live, providing them with initial financial supports, medical care, language training, educational opportunities strains an already-strained system in Canada at all government levels.

 

In cities like Toronto where many of the refugee declarants head directly for temporary emergency housing -- already under strain to accommodate Canadians who have fallen on hard times and/or those whom the added financial strains of the COVID pandemic's upheaval of social, employment norms have sent into the ranks of the homeless -- an overburdened situation has been exacerbated by the presence of migrants. 

In Toronto 40 percent of people in homeless shelters in 2019 were refugees and asylum claimants. Refugees and asylum claimants represented 80 percent of the total families living in shelters in 2018. A 2018 study of homeless shelters in Ottawa revealed that close to 25 percent of those using the shelters were immigrants or refugees. When the viral pandemic struck, close living quarters in shelters convinced many to leave that shared housing in preference to living on the street.

The downtown cores of many cities now reflect the growing number of street people who have left crowded shelters to live in tent cities in public parks and on sidewalks. An issue of public safety has arisen in lock-step with illegal tent cities. So it defies logic and simple common sense to proudly proclaim Canada's readiness to increase by a wide margin an already large committed number of refugees to a country which has been unable to accommodate the needs of newly-entering people.

The Liberal government speaks of "irregular" entries to the country, when what they are is "illegal". There are legal entry points where people can declare themselves and where they know that entering Canada from the United States where a safe country agreement is in effect whereby the first country entered is the country where application should be made, is deliberately bypassed. In illegal entry a strange situation unfolds where the illegals declare themselves refugees and are enabled to make applications to remain in the country.

Germany stands out as the European country that distinguished itself in 2015 and 2016 in its declaration that it was prepared to accept a million refugees and migrants pouring illegally into Europe from Africa and the Middle East. Years later the German government finds itself supporting those they permitted entry to, many of whom are disproportionately involved in violent crime, according to the government's own data. A mere 50 percent of the migrants -- mostly young, single men -- are employed in Germany.

Robust social welfare systems that leave no one behind are viewed by many who have long been citizens and grew up in the system, as a last resort when living turns tough. To many others coming from countries with no notion of public welfare, state support through welfare seems attractive and well worth leaving home for. Those genuinely seek a better life and prepared to work toward it have indeed made Canada what it is, a country of immigrants.

In earlier generations those who entered Canada as immigrants and refugees, many non-skilled, without higher education levels, applied themselves to whatever employment was available. There were no social welfare programs of any note in that era. People lived in poverty and slowly improved their living situations, their children received good educations and found better employment and left poverty behind. At the present time, all manner of government programs in support of immigrants and refugees are available, and, it seems, less effort is put out for self-support by those feeling entitled to state support.

 

Police erected a tent at the Roxham Road crossing, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer informs a migrant couple about a legal border station a few kilometres away. (Charles Krupa/Associated Press)