The migrant crisis

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How can we let migrant children float around the ocean with no food or water for days? How much do we spend on wars and weapons and greedy Senators when these children are so desperately needy? That is not my world. Is it yours?

How can we let migrant children float around the ocean with no food or water for days? How much do we spend on wars and weapons and greedy Senators when these children are so desperately needy? That is not my world. Is it yours?
I understand it’s a complicated problem and there are many arguments made against helping them, i.e. Why work hard and squander our money on these lazy, disease-ridden people? How can we let them come here, take our jobs, and change our culture?
That’s what was said about most immigrant groups to Canada. Yet look at us now.
I am the granddaughter of an Irish Nan who got off a famine ship quarantined at Grosse Isle. Have you been to Grosse Isle? I have, and saw the Lazarus House, the
dormitories, the de-lousing showers, and the mass graves of the typhus-infected who didn’t survive.
Look at our family now: lawyers and nurses, teachers and farmers, musicians, loggers, pilots and war-heroes. We are hard-working, loyal and productive Canadian citizens.
We made it. They can too.
Think about this: How much did Senators embezzle from taxpayers for their extravagant lifestyles? How many groceries could Duffy’s $90K buy? We need to examine our values, establish priorities, and we need to do this in a global context. We need to spend our treasures on peaceful solutions, not wars.
We don’t have to be so overwhelmed that we shelter them in unsustainable refugee camps as they do in Jordan or Lebanon. We can do better. We have
millions of square miles of empty bush and lumberjacks who know how to manage it, farmers who know how to help a village feed itself, and technicians who can
recommend green energy services. We have an excellent Can-Do military who went to Afghanistan and created villages in the desert sands – they can advise us.
We can start new settlements just as our grandparents did – here in the Ottawa Valley. They cleared the bush, built houses, sowed crops, and became educated. We, the beneficiaries, can pay it all forward.
Excuses aren’t good enough. We can make a difference. Let us try.
Sher Cahill Brisebois
MANSFIELD