Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who plans to meet the refugees as they arrive, told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the first plane carrying more than 160 refugees was expected to land from Beirut at 9:15 p.m. Eastern Thursday at Toronto’s global airport.
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The first Syrian refugees arrived in Canada and were welcomed by the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
A second flight is set to arrive in Montreal on Saturday as part of the federal government pledge to welcome 25,000 refugees by the end of February. Initially, the government wanted to bring in all 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of this year. “And the fact that in our country, two-thirds of the people agree versus less than 30% south of the border, I think says something about Canada”. Once the refugees leave the airport, they will be permanent residents. Those files were transferred to nearby countries, leaving visa officers scrambling to handle them and the start of a surge in Syrian refugee applications.
A group of “ordinary Canadian” well-wishers from World Vision planned to greet the arriving plane, but made the hard decision to stay home due to the flight’s delay and tight security surrounding the process.
Meantime, administrators at Vancouver International Airport are also getting ready to welcome refugees from Syria.
The Toronto Star, the largest-circulation daily newspaper in Canada, used Thursday’s front cover to welcome Syrian refugees with the headline “Welcome To Canada” written in English and Arabic.
About 800 refugees are going through screening tests in Lebanon and Jordan daily, Mr McCallum said.
There are two categories of refugees that will make their way to the island: government sponsored and privately sponsored. Stephen Harper promised during the election campaign to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in response to the crisis.
Canada’s commitment reflects the change in government after October’s election.
With so many refugees coming and in so short a space of time Ottawa has said it will use also military planes to help in the so called “air lift”.
People died while they were waiting to come to Canada, said Tie, and sponsorship groups who were interested in sponsoring refugees would submit forms and suddenly it would take three or four years.
Canada has long prided itself on opening its doors to asylum seekers.
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– The UN High Commissioner for Refugees asks the world for an additional 100,000 places for Syrian refugees by 2016. It airlifted more than 5,000 people from Kosovo in the late 1990s, more than 5,000 from Uganda in 1972 and resettled 60,000 Vietnamese in 1979-80. The Syrian civil war, which entered its fifth year in March, has created more than 4 million refugees.
