London bombings explode myths about refugees

For at least half a decade, refugees have been the scapegoats of a nation obsessed by security.

Asylum seekers who arrive in North America become easy pickings for a security system unable to identify the real threat but hungry to hang the cloak of culpability on the easiest peg; the refugee.

If you don’t believe me, ask why Canada's refugee reform has been placed right in the middle of the national policy on security, published and released last year. What has refugee reform to do with security?

The September 11 tragedy was perpetrated by those who had entered the U.S. legally. The London bombings were orchestrated and carried out by home-grown nationals, albeit of non-Caucasian origin. So what’s with this myth that refugees are a security risk?

Refugees look to Canada for protection; protection from horrible, torturous conditions in their countries where they have lost almost everything, much more than you and I can ever imagine. These brave survivors look to Canada to give them the peace they never experienced; a chance to live again. And yet, many of these fellow beings are caught up in a system that has them lingering in detention or without permanent protection, waiting long years in a limboland of uncertainty where they wonder if they made the right choice in the first place.

How would you feel if you escaped persecution, made it to Canada but could not bring your family, living or more correctly dying, in a refugee camp overseas only because you have been kept from receiving permanent resident status? The excuse: because your security check was "in process", for the last five years?

I think we all know where the real threats come from now. Terrorists are the last people who would use the refugee system to slip into a country because of the rigorous identity checks associated with it. Let’s welcome refugees and stop stereotyping them. Let’s show them that we Canadians care by helping them to pick up their lives again and giving them all the institutional support to do so; now that the myth is exploded.

An excerpt of this was published in the Toronto Star on July 15.