Refugees In Canada Essay Example

Over the course of the 153 years that Canada has been a sovereign nation, there have been millions that call this land home. As of 2021, the current population of Canada consists of over 38 million people (Statistics Canada, 2021), all from varying cultural,racial,soci-economic backgrounds. Due to Canada being a country that practices capitalism, which causes inequalities and discrepancies between Canada’s residents. As well as being a capitalist society, Canada is also a country that is rooted in colonization by the white European settlers that came to this land and ethnically cleansed the First Nation’s people who dwelled here before. Ultimately this led to the marginalization of many demographics that inhabit Canada and very much currently affect the population.

Refugees

There are many varying definitions of what a refugee is amongst different levels of national and international aid. For the purposes of this paper, when the word refugee is referenced, it is referring to the definition of the Geneva Convention of 1951 Refugee Convention, which states that a refugee “is a person who is outside his or her home country and who has a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons, race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” (Canadian Council of Refugees, 2017).  

According to the United Nations’ Refugee Agency, since 1980, Canada has welcomed over one million refugees and has more than once placed first internationally for accepting the most refugees. Despite Canada having the ability to accommodate the amount of refugees that are relocated to Canada from other countries, the refugee community is still marginalized within the communities they inhabit. Refugees in Canada are marginalized within communities for reasons such as other Canadians' own prejudice, the various political parties having different stances on how to treat refugees, and ultimately the resources that are given to refugees are not infinite, which causes inequalities within the community. 

Although Canada has gotten the reputation of being a progressive society, often referred to as a “cultural mosaic”, there are many Canadian citizens who are incredibly prejudice, especially towards non-white migrants. In 2016, CTVNews reported that there was an attack on a group of Syrian refugees in downtown Vancouver at a welcoming event for the Syrian refugees. A man on a bicycle came up to the gathering and pepper sprayed the crowd, resulting in the injury of 15 Syrian men, women, and children. After the initial investigation, the Vancouver Police Department stated that they believed the attack was hate motivated (CTVNews, 2016).The article goes into further detail about the treatment of Muslim people in Canada. The article interviews Samer Majzoub, the head of the Canadian Muslim form at the time of the attack. Majzoub made a comment that “Unfortunately, attacks on Canadian Muslims are “not something new to the Canadian Muslim community,” Majzoub said, pointing to reports of hijab-wearing women being attacked in public places.” (CTVNews, 2016).