What Does It Mean to Help One Family?
The family was living through the first refugee crisis in history in which people without countries or homes could communicate instantaneously with one another. Previous generations of refugees often ached for any information about relatives, but now messages zipped back and forth around the world on free apps. The joy of such regular communication came at a steep cost: constant updates on the misery of relatives left behind, intensifying worry and impeding progress for those trying to carve out a new life.
.. But thanks in large part to cellphones and social media, Canadians with no prior connection to the Middle East were getting glimpses into the well of desperation that was the refugee crisis.
.. delighted by things Canadians took for granted — new pencils, popcorn at the movies, a soccer goal with a net.
.. The Hajjes were supposed to be self-sufficient by next February, but she feared they had virtually no chance of succeeding. They could not fill out a permission slip, read a medicine label, pay a bill or navigate the subway to a new destination on their own.
.. “No matter how hard he tries, he may never really speak English well, and that will really limit him,”
.. The Canadian women saw sponsorship like a life raft: If you overloaded it, you risked sinking those you were trying to rescue.