Re: Tony Markle’s letter about refugees (The NEWS, Nov. 24).
Firstly, we cannot compare the homeless in this town to the refugees.
Anyone who works with the homeless or has researched this understands it. Homelessness includes mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction. Please do some homework on the subject.
Secondly, I would like to introduce my parents. They arrived as immigrants from Germany in 1952. They didn’t speak English and were very quiet about it because being German back then was very unpopular.
My mom came from what was soon to become East Germany, where the Russians came to their apartment at the end of the war, sexually abused girls and women over the age of about 13 years old and then kicked them out to the street with their suitcases and took their homes.
She starved as a child. Her father was killed 10 days before the end of the war.
Their’s was a musical family. My parents had no skills when they arrived. They made their way with the help of other Germans in Victoria, paid their way through school, became a teacher and physiotherapist and brought up three decent children who are proud to be Canadian and love this land.
They still live down Island and are now in their 80s. There are children and grandchildren.
Why do you assume the refugees arriving in our country want anything different than my parents did and are not capable of achieving it in Canada? My parents and tens of thousands like them would have had no opportunities based on your thought process.
Andrea WilsonParksville