William Watson: Now we know how well Trudeau’s Syrian refugees are doing. It’s not good fpcomment
With the world now reconsidering Justin Trudeau, it’s useful to update one of his very first signature policies: the admission of 25,000 Syrian refugees in the opening months of his prime ministership. We forget already how controversial that was — signature grandstanding, many people thought — and how the government at first had trouble meeting its self-imposed deadline.
But of course the goal is to have Syrian refugees do well in absolute terms, not just in comparison to other refugees. To that end, the fact that fewer than half of the Syrians spoke either official language when they arrived here, while 51 per cent of men and 47 per cent of women didn’t have a high-school diploma, seems bound to make absolute success difficult.
Five years on, however, refugees from the class of 2011 had median earnings of only $21,500. Among those, government-assisted refugees were making just $16,200, while privately sponsored refugees were at $22,400. In their very first year of earning, these two groups had made just $6,900 and $18,900, respectively. So their median incomes had gone up. Just not very high.
Besides, 25,000 Syrian refugees are less than one-tenth of one per cent of Canada’s population. In the larger scheme of things, the challenges they pose are barely noticeable. We’re a rich country. We can afford to help out some of the most desperate people in the world.
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