What to do about Syria's refugees?
Great things:
Accepting masses of Irish immigrants escaping the Irish Famine in the late 1840's and early 1850s, and allowing orphans who landed in Quebec to keep their names.
Thousands of Hungarians escaped Communism, and were welcomed into Canada.
50,000 boat people from Vietnam were allowed to immigrate in the 1970s.
50,000 Poles escaping crushing of Solidarity were allowed to immigrate in the 1980s.
Shameful things:
Head Tax on Chinese immigrants...then barring entry into the country until 1947.
Komagata Maru incident, keeping people from India out of Canada, in spite of the fact that they were also British subjects.
Turning back Jews fleeing Naxis before WW2..."none is to many".
It is perhaps a tad unfair judging yesterday's actions by the standards of today. But today, there are about 2 million Syrian refugees trying to flee horrors that equal anything that has occurred anywhere since WW2.
As of the start of 2015, Canada had accepted about 1,000 of these people. It has recently undertaken to accept 10,000 more Syrian immigrants over the next three years.
No country that puts its fear before its compassion will ever do great things.
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