The Tamils Aren't Refugees

When the UN isn't on the side of the Tamil refugees, you know the refugee ships should be looked at with skepticism.

Sri Lanka's brutal 26-year civil war, one marked with ghastly terrorist actions by the Tamil Tigers (including the invention of the suicide bomber, a now widely used horror), finally came to a close last year. I therefore find it odd that in the year of the closet thing to peace the country has known in a generation, Tamil "refugees" are now arriving in Canada.

In July, the UN said that the country was no longer in such dire straits that refugees should be accepted no-questions-asked. Instead, now that the war is over, any refugee claims should be closely considered and evaluated on their merits. There are serious questions as to whether these people are Tamil terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers, a distinction which should mean little. There are suggestions that the Tamil diaspora in Canada, the largest anywhere other than Sri Lanka itself, is using this country to organize, fundraise, and recruit for a future effort to restart the civil war. There is also questions about Canada's Tamil population. As you'll remember, thousands of Tamils in Toronto shut down traffic in the city last year when the Tamils were being defeated in Sri Lanka. So many Tamils showed up to the protest that authorities noted that we didn't even know that many were in Canada. With these many questions, this much concern, Canada should be taking a much firmer approach with dealing with these refugee boats, of which there are already reports of two more preparing to depart Sri Lanka.