Is Canada a Refuge, Still?

More than four million refugees of the Syrian civil war have fled their country since the civil war began five years ago. It's the largest movement of people since World War One, and Europe is overwhelmed. Greece alone has had more than 800,000 people seek asylum by some counts.
And things like this keep happening: getting out of the immediate chaos is only the first hurdle for refugees. All too often they either die in the attempt to seek a better life...or they're turned away.

I've been hearing for years about how Canada has a "moral obligation" to confront ISIS. Strangely, we don't seem to have any moral obligation to confront their handiwork.

I think we do. I think Canada should be taking as many of these refugees in as possible.

I still remember every minute of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics opening ceremonies. Do you remember this part?

"I came to Canada as a refugee. Forty-five years later,  for me, Canada is a refuge, still."
--Joe Schlesinger, testimonial, Pier 21 museum, Halifax

Bring this up online and the reaction is immediate, hateful, and grounded in delusion. Here's one example:

"we can't even support our own pensioners yet we'll take in tens of thousands of these people and give them housing and thousands of dollars per month"

This is flat wrong. Refugees get money based on provincial social assistance (welfare) rates--if they have no funds of their own--plus a one-time start-up grant that's capped at $905. (Source) Hardly 'thousands of dollars'.

It's sad, but not surprising. People tend to VASTLY overestimate the amount of money governments spend on things that do not directly benefit them. Foreign aid is a good example: When Americans were asked what percentage of the government budget goes to foreign aid, the median answer was around 25%. The reality? About 1%.

Think about that a minute.

The same thing holds true for welfare fraud. Everybody claims to know a guy who knows a guy living high on the hog on the state's dime, but the actual amount of welfare fraud in study after study is found to be between 1 and 3%.

How many refugees does Canada accept? The total is between ten and fourteen thousand a year...out of an estimated 16.7 million refugees, in a country with more than 34 million people and a declining birthrate. A drop in the ocean.

How we can stand idly by in the midst of a crisis like the one continuing to unfold in Syria utterly baffles me. It's not as if we don't have the space in this country. Or the money. Or the shared humanity.