Welcome to Prince George!
The Hannan family surrounded by members of the Christian Reformed Chuch – photo 250News
Prince George, B.C. – An emotional moment this afternoon at Prince George Airport as the city welcomed its fourth Syrian refugee family.
“Thank you so much for this wonderful welcome,” said Mahmoud Hannan through an interpreter. “We can feel the love you have brought us.”
Starting the day in Toronto before transferring to Prince George through Vancouver, Hannan was joined by his wife and three daughters.
“It’s been a long day but because of the joy it’s felt like a half an hour.”
Prior to their arrival in Canada, the Hannan’s had spent the past three years in Turkey after being leaving their hometown of Afrin, Syria.
The family has been privately sponsored by the Christian Reformed Church and their next stop will be a rented duplex in Prince George.
The Syrian community will soon multiply even further, as the Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society awaits the arrival of an additional 10 government sponsored Syrian refugee families sometime this week.
The arrival of Syrian families has touched Skeena Bulkley MP Nathan Cullen “It’s quite a wonderful thing to see folks from right across the community spectrum working together to welcome folks from abroad. It’s quite restoring. After watching five clips of Donald Trump you kind of get discouraged about the world. Then you go an talk to some of these groups and you feel good again.”
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Quite a few of us are immigrants to this wonderful country.
And south of the border, sounds like there’s more refugees on the way.
This out of BBC/US and Canada News.
“The link to the “Apply to immigrate to Canada” page has been tweeted more than 29,000 times in the past 24 hours, a staggering growth in interest.
Some kind Canadians have offered to take in those fleeing the US.
“Some kind Canadians have offered to take in those fleeing the US”. They must have seen the Republican results for Super Tuesday…. ;)
Sooo funny.. Now escaping from Trump
Meanwhile in Fujian China, there’s some people reading this and scratching their heads and saying WTF – they put us in jail. What went wrong? Maybe we should try again, they seem friendlier now.
While I welcome the Syrian refugee’s, I can’t help but wonder why we are making this Syrian refugee situation such a big deal.
Canada has taken in 26,000 refugee’s on an annul basis in the past 10 years.
In 2014 there were 23,285 refugee’s admitted to Canada. Refugee’s account for 10% of all immigrants who come to Canada.
In the last 10 years 2005-2014 150,000 refugee’s and their dependents became permanent residents of Canada after claiming refugee status.
Refugee’s come from various countries, in the past 10 years more or less we had 17,381 from Colombia.
So, refugee’s are not new to Canada.
Its interesting to note that the family above spent the past three years in a refugee camp in Turkey. Why did it take so long for them to be processed???
What difference does it make what their journey has been? Stop with the apostrophes!
“Its interesting to note that the family above spent the past three years in a refugee camp in Turkey. Why did it take so long for them to be processed??? ”
The one time you need an apostrophe and you don’t use it. :)
The world wasn’t spurred into action until Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach.
Aylan Kurdi … that was September 2015
Maybe on this side of the Atlantic the “world” that does not really know too much about what the “world” actually is. Europe has a larger population than the USA and Canada combined. Take in the world east of Turkey and it increases by millions more.
That is where the primary action has been. Those are the people who know the area.
Refugees have been going through Greece and from there to the West of Europe ever since the start of the Syrian Civil War.
Here is a page describing the timeline. syrianrefugees.eu/?page_id=163
April 2011 – 5 years ago – The flow of Syrian refugees to neighbouring countries begins in earnest. In May, Syrian refugees flee harsh fighting in the town of Talkalakh – many cross into Lebanon using an unofficial border crossing previously used to smuggle goods. 5,000 refugees
June 2011 – thousands flee
July 2011 – 2,000 flee to Jordan over the rest of the year
Nov 2011 – Turkey takes in refugees as “guests”
April 2012 – Syrians with Kurdish ancestry fleeing to Iraqi Kurdistan. The Domiz camp was built to accommodate 10,000 people – up to 3 times as many actually live(d) there eventually
People interviewed feared physical violence (25%); being used as a human shield (25%); rape (24%); forced military service (22%).
Skipping to July 3, 2012 – Intense warfare causes up to 200,000 to flee, with thousands crossing over to Turkey.
In response, Greece beefs up border guards in case of an influx of Syrian refugees.
July 18, 2012 – from 18,000 to 40,000 refugees crossed the Masnaa border post into Lebanon over a few days
September 11, 2012 – up to 11,000 Syrians flee Syria in 24 hour period – Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon.
By December 2012, there were an estimated of over 525,000 who were in the hands of the UN and its partner agences.
By end of 2013 – there were 2 million refugees with half being children.
Germany did not start accepting refugees till September 2013 – 5,000 for resettlement, the largest program to that time.
Anyone who is really interested can search this out yourself. It has not been a North American issue till 2015.
For those who think this is an ISIS generated event, that was not till June of 2014. Before that it was Syria’s Civil War. In that month 500,000 fled Mosul.
The link stops October 2014.
“For those who think this is an ISIS generated event, that was not till June of 2014.”
No, this was a formulated death cult initiated event brought on by the global banking elite as a follow on from Libya… masked as a ‘civil war’ to remove Assad from power. The death cult branch of isis is merely a symptom of a great ill brought on by foreign powers like America, Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia primarily. Betrayal is the only common thread that runs through the entire Syrian conflict and isis is only the most visible example of that.
Ask them, you will likely learn a lot more than the answer you seek. If this happened to you in Canada, would you not stick around nearby thinking this will be over soon and I can go back home. These people lived there. It was their country and most of them liked it.
I am sure you would want to come back to Canada once Trump’s forces leave when the Alaskans and all the other border states with Canadian Heritage join our fight.
Trump is sure to get even when he discovers that we won 1812. He is too proud of his country and will rewrite history to suit his propaganda. :-)
Trump won’t be the Republican nominee, nor will Bernie Sanders be the Democratic nominee. America is not a democracy.
America is a plutocracy; and the plutocracy of banksters and global corpocracy, with the zionists at the top, will not allow anyone near power that threatens their global hegemony over political power and finance.
The real power in America brought down the twin towers and got away with it (PNAC). They assassinated a president (JFK) and got away with it. In fact Bush senior even gave Trump the slashed throat sign during the last republican debate… that is ominous for anyone that knows his CIA/Panama and family history. These guys brought us isis, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Israel… and together the crimes are enormous and the risk is to great to allow real democracy.
On the democratic side the game is rigged with half the delegates appointed by the party; and all those are going for Hillary. In New Hampshire Bernie Sanders won by over 30-points, but yet Hillary got the majority of the delegates because of the party fix. Heck even the GOP leadership said they will back Hillary if Trump wins the GOP nomination.
On the republican side they are pinning for Trump not getting a majority of delegates on the first ballot. On a second ballot all delegates are released from their obligation to the voters that put them there and can vote freely… thus ripe for a GOP establishment coup. This is why the other candidates will not be dropping out no matter how ludicrous it looks to those watching Trump steam roll everyone.
The ‘establishment’ will not be going with Rubio or Cruze either. They hate Ted as much as they hate Trump, because either Cruze or Trump could get righteous in power and threaten their position in government. I don’t think America is yet ready to support their first gay latin president either… I can see why the ‘establishment’ would want him in the White House though… but the republican base will not come out to vote for that.
I called it 6-months ago and I call it the same now as then. Kasich will likely be the republican nominee for president. The ‘establishment’ has clearly groomed him for the position and trusts Kasich as the white horse to save the day for the establishment. Kasich only has to win his own state of Ohio and he will likely become the consensus nominee on the second ballot. Ohio is the 7th largest state by vote and no elected republican president has ever lost Ohio. If Trump looses Ohio then he will likely loose the nomination to Kasich.
Oddly Trump has not attack Kasich and only compliments him…?
Kasich-Carson looks probable as I can’t see Trump running as a vice president on the ticket.
“Ask them, you will likely learn a lot more than the answer you seek.”
I have asked them. The answers bring tears to my eyes, and keep me awake at night.
These are families who left everything behind, to find safety for their children. They were not unhappy in Syria, and had a good life. A bloody war came to their country, a war that had nothing to do with them. How many of you would have an easy time walking away from everything you have in your life?
Are you some of you so greedy that you can not share a small percentage of our tax base to lend a hand? Lift a very small percentage of them up? Every one of the refugee families I have met so far are eager to get to work, pay back their debt to society. They did not come here to be bums, but to make a better life.
Welcome to Prince George! All the best wishes and good luck. They look like a deserving family.
Welcome to the Hannan family. I hope you find peace here.
We’ll try not to o’er do it with the apostrophes.
Palopu; in answer to your previous question: “While I welcome the Syrian refugee’s, I can’t help but wonder why we are making this Syrian refugee situation such a big deal?”
We are making such a big deal about this Syrian Refugee Crisis, because we (Canada) are partially responsible for it. It is our fighter jets, among others, who are bombing the crap out of their, villages, cities and country. It gets to the point where they have nothing left and must flee an untenable situation.
www. cnn.com/videos/world/2015/05/06/lklv-paton-walsh-syria-drone-damage.cnn
I call BS on that. The Canadian air operations were mostly all in Iraq in support of the Kurdish Peshmerga that are supported by Canadian ‘trainers’ on the ground lighting up the targets. As far as I have read the operations in Syria were very limited to only a few sorties where bombs were not released.
Most of the damage to the Syrian cities is done from the Syrian air force, or actual fighting on the ground with weapons like rocket launchers, artillery, tanks, and American made TOWS missile systems.
Only recently have the Russians and Americans contributed to the large scale bombing in Syria.
JGalt you might might want to recheck your facts and do some basic research before you post
@ Eagleone; while it is true that Canada’s fighter jets only participated in 2.7% of bombing sorties in Syria, none-the-less, Canada both endorses and supports the war on ISIL in Syria, a war waged from the air with most all engagements being air strikes… after all what country would want their troops to engage ISIL on the ground?
If we participate in airstrikes in Syria, and we support our allies in the war in Syria, we should avoid being two-faced and at least support the refugees that we helped create.
Here is an exercise in logic eagleone and dearth; if as eagleone states; “As far as I have read the operations in Syria were very limited to only a few sorties where bombs were “not” released.”
So if our fighter jets are basically doing nothing in Syria, why is there so much Conservative opposition to pulling our jets out of the war in Syria? To me, if Canadian pilots have only participated in “very limited” and “very few” sorties where NO bombs were dropped, can’t we just call them training exercises, call them home and have them do it here? LOL…
JGault, I had not said if I was for or against the refugees. I merely disagree with your contention that Canada has responsibility for what happened to Iraq. We stayed out of the Iraq war,which was a major cause of this. How ever we did lead in the destruction of Libya, and that led directly to what happened in Syria and was just as bad nation planning….
Keeping the plans in Kuwait was to support the elected government in Iraq and the Kurds as much as to ensure we had loyal air support for our trainers on the ground. Otherwise countries like Turkey or Israel surely would have taken liberties given the chance. It seems the Americans have now given us the air support guarantees to work with the Kurds, and Turkey is complaining we are either with them against the Kurds or with the Kurds against Turkey (which is an Isis supporter)…. NATO membership aside Obama has told Turkey that yhe Kurds are a valued ally now against isis.
Getting the planes out of Kuwait is good, because otherwise they become targetsinthecomingwar between Iran and Saudi Arabia. They should have been moved to Cypris or Kurdistan IMO. I think a false flag attack on our trainers is still a very real possibility.
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