Visiting West Vancouver on Thursday, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said a Liberal government would bring over 25,000 Syrian refugees in the next few months, which Trudeau estimated would cost about $100 million.
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Refugees tend to settle in established communities that share their ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
The organizations, which included Save the Children and Oxfam America, also called on Washington to invoke newly reestablished ties with Iran – an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – to find a lasting political solution to Syria’s four-year-old war.
The warning comes even as some congregations here are seeking to sponsor Syrian refugees arriving in the U.S. The majority moved to Texas (196), California (171), Michigan (170), Illinois (142), Arizona (114) and Florida (100). Two individuals were sent to Richfield and a family of five settled in Rochester.
Arab Americans advocating on behalf of Syrian refugees have found some unlikely allies in their effort to resettle families from the war-torn nation: influential Jewish groups.
A question on the refugee crisis facing Europe is likely to come up at the Republican debate tonight and I have a slim hope that some of the candidates will come up with a coherent answer.
That leaves one last argument against admitting more refugees to the U.S., and it’s perhaps the most important argument to American lawmakers who oppose the idea: the possibility that terrorists will slip in amongst the accepted migrants.
The Obama administration will announce by Oct. 1 the total number of refugees to be allowed into the United States over the next fiscal year, including the final number from Syria. It’s a plan with the potential to affect Rogers Park, as Chicago’s North Side neighborhoods have traditionally been home to multiple refugee resettlement agencies, including World Relief, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, RefugeeOne and the Heartland Human Care Services. Our borders are not as porous as those between Syria and most of Europe.
The number of displaced Syrians will only rise as the long as the conflict persists. “We have housing and we have employment”. Finland receives between 200-300 refugees per day from Iraq, Afganistan, Somalia and Albania. If more funds to speed this up is the answer, Congress should make that happen. Currently, the cap for all admitted refugees, regardless of nationality, sits at 70,000.
The refugee crisis unfolding in Europe has Oregonians offering help.
A refugee is someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country“, according to the 1951 Refugee Convention from the United Nations. Those left behind have stuggled to survive. “There are millions of people who have been driven from their homes because of this violence…”
Canny said the half dozen dioceses that have asked to start resettlement programs would be receiving people not just from Syria, but from the broader population of worldwide refugees as well.
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In another open letter, Canadian Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton asks Canadians to live up to their tradition of responding to refugee crises.
