GOLDSTEIN: Concern over UN refugee pact widespread and growing
Predictably, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Immigration
Minister Ahmed Hussen and Canada’s liberal intelligentsia are falsely
portraying opposition to the United Nations’ Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) as racist.
The pact is to be approved in Marrakech, Morocco on Monday and Tuesday by most of the 193 countries that unanimously agreed to it in principle in negotiations spanning two years.
But since then a number of countries have had second thoughts about supporting the GCM due to the issue it’s ostensibly designed to address.
The U.S. pulled out of the GCM with the Trump administration describing it as “inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t supporting it, because, “we have a duty to protect our borders against illegal infiltrators. That’s what we’ve done and that’s what we will continue to do.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected the pact because it would, “undermine Australia’s strong border protection laws and practices” and “fails to adequately distinguish between people who enter Australia illegally and those who come to Australia the right way, particularly with respect to the provision of welfare and other benefits.”
Belgium Immigration Minister Theo Francken said: “It’s way too pro-migration. It doesn’t have the nuance that it needs to have to also comfort European citizens. It’s not legally binding but it’s not without legal risks.”
(Belgium is divided on the issue with its largest political party, of which Francken is a member, opposed to the pact while the nation’s parliament has approved it.)
In Canada, while Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen is now stressing the voluntary nature of the GCM, that’s not what he was emphasizing in a September Maclean’s column on it, co-authored with International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Jean-Nicolas Beuze, Canada’s representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
“The Compact isn’t just a bunch of words on paper,” they wrote. “It represents the common understanding and political commitment to protect and find solutions for refugees differently. This is why it lists new strategies and specific goals. Through regular follow-up meetings on the Compact, member states and partners will thus hold each other more accountable on their promises to deliver results for refugees and their hosts.”
Their column sneeringly dismisses the concerns of Canadians about the thousands of asylum seekers who have entered the country at unmanned border crossings under the Trudeau government, as “populist rhetoric” based on anti-refugee “myths”.
In other words, it’s clear the Trudeau government is treating the GCM not as a symbolic, non-binding, aspirational document, but as a significant global agreement that will have a major impact on Canadian refugee and migration policy.
For the Liberals and their academic and media cheerleaders to suggest it’s anything less is highly misleading.
Canadians have every right to be concerned.
The pact is to be approved in Marrakech, Morocco on Monday and Tuesday by most of the 193 countries that unanimously agreed to it in principle in negotiations spanning two years.
But since then a number of countries have had second thoughts about supporting the GCM due to the issue it’s ostensibly designed to address.
The U.S. pulled out of the GCM with the Trump administration describing it as “inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t supporting it, because, “we have a duty to protect our borders against illegal infiltrators. That’s what we’ve done and that’s what we will continue to do.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected the pact because it would, “undermine Australia’s strong border protection laws and practices” and “fails to adequately distinguish between people who enter Australia illegally and those who come to Australia the right way, particularly with respect to the provision of welfare and other benefits.”
Belgium Immigration Minister Theo Francken said: “It’s way too pro-migration. It doesn’t have the nuance that it needs to have to also comfort European citizens. It’s not legally binding but it’s not without legal risks.”
(Belgium is divided on the issue with its largest political party, of which Francken is a member, opposed to the pact while the nation’s parliament has approved it.)
In Canada, while Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen is now stressing the voluntary nature of the GCM, that’s not what he was emphasizing in a September Maclean’s column on it, co-authored with International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Jean-Nicolas Beuze, Canada’s representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
“The Compact isn’t just a bunch of words on paper,” they wrote. “It represents the common understanding and political commitment to protect and find solutions for refugees differently. This is why it lists new strategies and specific goals. Through regular follow-up meetings on the Compact, member states and partners will thus hold each other more accountable on their promises to deliver results for refugees and their hosts.”
Their column sneeringly dismisses the concerns of Canadians about the thousands of asylum seekers who have entered the country at unmanned border crossings under the Trudeau government, as “populist rhetoric” based on anti-refugee “myths”.
In other words, it’s clear the Trudeau government is treating the GCM not as a symbolic, non-binding, aspirational document, but as a significant global agreement that will have a major impact on Canadian refugee and migration policy.
For the Liberals and their academic and media cheerleaders to suggest it’s anything less is highly misleading.
Canadians have every right to be concerned.
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