{"id":115,"date":"2017-11-01T08:19:41","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T12:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/?p=115"},"modified":"2017-11-01T08:19:41","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T12:19:41","slug":"we-help-them-they-help-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/2017\/11\/01\/we-help-them-they-help-us\/","title":{"rendered":"We Help Them, They Help Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Francesca Billington<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just humanitarian\u2014we need it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Rempel, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Manitoba Education and Training, said Tuesday morning, that resettling and integrating refugees is not only a humanitarian effort. It\u2019s something that the Canadian economy and the country\u2019s aging demographic needs. This is why the numbers of refugees Canada takes should be increased, Rempel said. Canada needs to \u201cshift the discourse\u201d and the government should start talking about refugees in terms of what good they can bring the country.<\/p>\n

In other words: \u201cIf you help them, they will help you.\u201d Tam Nguyen, the owner of Tam\u2019s Pho on Portage Ave. in Winnipeg, promised himself, decades ago when he travelled from Vietnam to the U.S., that if he survived he would help other people in return. It had been three days since he\u2019d eaten, there was no water left, and he was on a small boat packed with others making the journey.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re sitting around four small, circular tables pushed together, all of which together span nearly the length of his restaurant. Tam has taken our orders and served us the food cooked by his wife. They got married two years ago before she moved to Canada. Tam comes out of the kitchen and stands in front of our tables, smiling. He isn\u2019t shy while talking about his first experiences in Winnipeg, when he knew no one and had almost nothing. He says he kept reminding himself that he had made the decision to leave for a reason, that he did not have to leave his family, that he needed to get up and make a better life for himself. So he did. \u201cI help people because I almost died on the boat,\u201d Tam said. \u201cI was hungry for three days and I would sit in the boat and pray.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tam did choose Canada but being resettled in Winnipeg was still a surprise. When he got here, Winnipeggers walked him through everything: learning English, grocery shopping. He opened his own tailor business and two years ago, his restaurant. He says that if someone here hadn\u2019t helped him, he wouldn\u2019t have started a business. Tam is grateful for the people who helped him, but he reminds us to know that refugees and immigrants will pay this wealth back. \u201cRefugees are very good for the country,\u201d Tam said. \u201cIf you help them, they will help you.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how do refugees and Canadians understand the point or benefit of resettlement? The Mennonite Central Committee Sponsorship Program recognizes refugee resettlement as having three distinct benefits: humanitarian, economic, and family unification. The MCC considers refugee private sponsorships as strictly humanitarian. Funding and supporting is not strictly tied to economic gains.<\/p>\n

Maybe it all comes down to whether acting in the spirit of humanitarianism or strong national economy are mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Francesca Billington \u201cIt\u2019s not just humanitarian\u2014we need it.\u201d Ben Rempel, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Manitoba Education and Training, said Tuesday morning, that resettling and integrating refugees is not only a humanitarian effort. It\u2019s something that the Canadian economy and the country\u2019s aging demographic needs. This is why the numbers of refugees Canada takes<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/manitoba-migration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}