The heart wrenching image of the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian refugee, has been seared into the minds of many people across the world. It represents the 4 million refugees who have fled due to the civil war in Syria. Alan Kurdi’s tragic tale is particularly poignant in B.C. because his aunt, who lives here, was actively trying to find a way to reunite her family.
This made me wonder what Canada was doing to help with this humanitarian crisis and from what I found out it doesn’t seem like much. While Stephen Harper boasts about Canada accepting 10,000 refugees annually, I feel that there is so much more we can do as a nation when compared to countries like Germany that are expected to provide asylum to up to 800,000 people. I understand that it is impossible to help every refugee in the world, but in order to keep pace with other nations, Canada should be doubling or tripling their annual intake of refugees!
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Compassion and empathy towards Syrian refugees is truly commendable, however, is it really rational to bring millions of new people to Canada? In fact, only 36% of Canadians want to accept more refugees. I can understand why many people may feel threatened by a large influx of refugees. For example, with a 7% unemployment rate and the possibility of a recession, many Canadians may feel that refugees might “steal” their jobs. In addition, many people argue that the refugees will be unable to assimilate and will feel persecuted. Also, despite the founder of War Child Canada, Samantha Nutt, stating that Canada has the ability to weed out any risks, there is the ingrained fear that Islamist terrorists could infiltrate Canada disguised as Syrian