What Canadians can learn from Germany
Since 2011, Germany has welcomed about 100,000 refugees from wartorn Syria — substantially higher than most other EU nations and far more than Canada, according to Hanns Thomae, a 63-year-old German refugee advocate. In the first four months of this year alone, about 20,000 refugees came to Germany, he says. That’s on top of 47,000 refugees in 2014. Thomae was in Toronto this week to discuss how refugee groups, churches and faith groups in Germany lobbied and challenged the government to open its doors to Syrian refugees. The former director of Refugee Outreach for the Evangelical Church in Berlin and Brandenburg spoke to the Star on Monday.
Certain reasons and factors came together . . . Churches have been working for quite a number of years on the protection of refugees in Germany. Another factor is the mood in society (in Germany) now is positive towards refugees. They agree we should help refugees. Right-wing extremists tried to fight this and tried to organize public opinion against this. But almost nowhere did the right-wing people succeed in organizing against refugees. We are lucky the government did not play the xenophobia card. We had former governments that did this in the 1990s. Lawyers and courts did — during the last few years — a good job so protection of refugees would become better.
Canada could do what Germany and Sweden did. Send border police to Lebanon for example, do the checking there and have some planes to bring refugees from there to Canada. This would not only solve the situation, but it would be a very important demonstration of solidarity and it would give hope to refugees . . . We brought 10,000 refugees from Lebanon and Jordan. UNHCR made suggestions who this would be and the German border police went there, did the checking and decided who was allowed to come . . . We (also) have a program that Syrian people living in Germany can invite members of their family to come to Germany when they can pay for their living (expenses) . . . I don’t know how many Syrians live in Canada. (But) to start with, you can let members of their families come to Canada or people who once have been to Canada, maybe did their studies here, can come. Just to start with. Go step by step. I think it would be a very important political signal if Canada would decide to take a (larger) number of Syrian refugees (or all refugees). Maybe other countries would follow.
I do not know the political situation in Canada. But . . . everyone knows that these refugees they lost everything. They lost their country, their jobs, their houses, maybe their families and friends. They need help. It’s very clear the neighbouring countries can’t take all the refugees. We should try to make this clear and to give understanding that we are and live in countries that do not suffer war. We do not suffer poverty, insecurity. We have an obligation to help these people . . . When they finally reach the country the most important thing is to integrate them as soon as possible, open the labour market, acknowledge their professional qualifications . . . It’s good for the country. A government, if it’s not ideologically blind, should understand this.