Hard to track the history of violence from refugees once they are in Canada

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Twenty-five thousand Syrian refugees are coming to Canada, but some people are worried about extremists posing as refugees and wreaking havoc in our nation.

It all starts overseas.

The UN will first screen the displaced people to see if they are indeed refugees.

“Generally speaking if it’s done overseas that process is done by the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees. After they do that process, they then make a recommendation to Canada for resettlement of that person in Canada,” says Dan Hiebert, a professor of geography at UBC.

He says once they are in Canada, CSIS and the RCMP will investigate.

“They often also rely on their counterparts in other countries and only after a person has been both recommended and then verified does a person get to come to Canada.”

Hiebert says it’s hard to track the history of violence from refugees once they are in Canada, but if there were major problems we likely would have heard about them by now.