The Refugee Crisis that wasn’t

18 Sivan 5784 (24 June 2024)

Back in May, Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller quietly published a press release declaring that the country’s Liberal government would be quintupling the number of refugees accepted from Gaza from 1,000 to 5,000. 

Canadians, as you might imagine, are not exactly keen on welcoming 5,000 radicalized Gazans into their neighborhoods, so the government tried to soften the blow by stressing that these refugees are receiving “temporary resident visas” as part of their “temporary special measures.” The word ‘temporary’ is actually mentioned five times in the brief press release. However, given Miller less than three weeks ago suggested that Canada could reduce the number of temporary residents in the country by making them permanent, I can’t imagine Canadians will find this language very reassuring.

But what’s perhaps even more interesting than the fact that the Trudeau government didn’t want to bring much attention to their own policy is the fact that the policy itself may be unachievable, and the Trudeau government knows it.

Two months after announcing the initial wave of refugees, Minister Miller updated Canadians by announcing, to the dismay of himself and no one else, that only 14 refugees had made it from Gaza to Canada thus far. While he assured Canadians that the Trudeau government “will be relentless in advocating” for Gazan refugees to come to Canada, stressing again on “a temporary basis,” he readily admitted that their pledge was “cold comfort” as “there are a number of matters that are beyond our control.”

Another two months have gone by since then and the Canadian government still hasn’t made much progress. Responding to requests from journalists, Miller’s office admitted on the same day as he announced the expansion of the refugee program that only 41 Gazans had made it to Canada. Miller’s press release even acknowledged that “movement out of Gaza is not currently possible.” 

The reason that movement out of Gaza is not currently possible, of course, is because Israel and Egypt won’t let the Gazans leave.

I could bring up the fact that the only Gazans who’ve made it to Canada thus far have done so by illegally smuggling themselves into Egypt first, thereby making them criminals, or the fact that a staggering majority of Gazans continue to support Hamas terrorists even after they’ve brought armageddon to their little strip of land, or the fact that Gazans are poor and uneducated and have nothing to offer Canadians, but none of it would matter. The Trudeau government has long abandoned even the facade that their immigration policy is about anything other than stuffing the country with as many people as possible to prop up the country’s housing-based economy. Canada in 2024 is a country where Iranian government officials can be filmed strolling through residential neighborhoods and the Indian gang members on student visas assassinate an Indian immigrant who also happens to lead an Indian secessionist terrorist group. Clearly the Canadian government is uninterested in the quality of immigrants they’re receiving.

In fact, it was even mentioned to Minister Miller that Gazans were paying exuberant sums to Egyptian smugglers to illegally enter Egypt before coming to Canada. The strongest condemnation he could muster up was that he’d “prefer” they don’t do that, but that he’s “not going to blame people” for taking such extreme measures. In other words, he doesn’t care if they’re criminals, only that as many of them get to Canada as possible.

After October 7th, a popular talking point employed by anti-Zionist right-wingers has been that Israel is seeking to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip by sending the people who live there to Western countries as refugees. Yet, in stark contrast to their hyperventilating, the opposite has come true. Israel may, in fact, be the first country in a very long time to decline Canada’s offer to make itself a dumping ground for the wretched of the earth.

- Beau Chasse