Angry in the Great White North

In World War II, few Jews made it out of Nazi-controlled Europe:

Another tragic episode in our country's history, Mr. Chairman, was the treatment of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and genocide in the years before and during World War II. German and Austrian Jews applied for visas, but the United States severely limited their entry due to strict immigration policies, policies that many believe were motivated by fear that our enemies would send spies under the guise of refugees and by the widespread anti-foreigner and anti-Semitic attitudes that pervaded American public opinion at that time.

That was Senator Russ Feingold delivering a statement to the US Senate Judiciary Committee in 2003. The fact is that most nations had similar policies. Though anti-Semitism had a big part in this, the concern about spies was legitimate. Indeed, security concerns affected the ability of any refugee, Jewish or otherwise, to leave. My father and the surviving members of his family could not leave the continent until after hostilities ended, even though they were rendered homeless in 1939 when the Soviets invaded Poland.

A refugee makes a great spy. Normally, a spy has to blend in. That means finding someone who speaks without an accent and understands the cultural and social rules, especially the unwritten ones. Typically, that means finding someone who was raised in the target country, but whose loyalty is to yours. But then you have to wonder where his loyalty really is, being a product of a foreign upbringing.

It's all very complicated and paranoid.

But a refugee is different. A refugee is expected to talk with an accent, dress differently, and make the occasional social faux pas. Better yet for this spy, that ignorance can be used to excuse failed infiltration attempts. "Sorry officer. I am new to reading English. I not know what 'Restricted" is to mean. Please to let me say I love Canada!"

So we're helping thousands of Canadians escape a war zone. Why? Obviously, the situation is somewhat different -- these people aren't technically foreign refugees as they do hold Canadian passports. But that is just a technicality -- many "Canadians" living in Lebanon are full-time residents of Lebanon who have spent almost no time in Canada, who own no property in Canada, who are citizens by virtue of the fact that they were born in Canada before being shipped immediately back to the old country.

Still, they are citizens and we owe them whatever help we can give them.

And yet all Canadians also expect the government to do its best to guarantee our security:

Federal security agencies are on the lookout for several veteran terrorists amid concerns they might try to slip into Canada during the evacuation from Lebanon.

At least two senior terror suspects with Canadian citizenship were living in Lebanon when fighting broke out two weeks ago between Hezbollah and the Israeli defence forces.

Kassem Daher, an alleged extremist recruiter from Leduc, Alta., and former Toronto resident Fawzi Ayub, a Hezbollah operative, were among the 50,000 Canadians living in Lebanon.

Stockwell Day, the Public Safety Minister, has asked the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to ensure they do not return.

That's for the ones we know about. What is not said, but is certainly a concern, is the potential for terrorists who we do not have on file and who have been recruited from among the ranks the Canadian citizens who are life-long full-time residents of Lebanon. We can't expect these people to feel much loyalty to Canada, and with Stephen Harper's principled stand on the side of Israel in this conflict, we can expect a lot of these people are feeling more than a bit miffed. Iranian and Syrian intelligence officers are no doubt working hard to find people among those ranks of Canadian passport holders who are sympathetic. Those people will be tracked after arriving in Canada, and with any luck, they'll be turned. Most will simply be sources of funds, but a few, a precious few, will become active terrorists. They will be counted on to provide safe houses for other terrorists, to lean on the local ethnic community to cough up money, and, for the elite, even partake in operations here or in the US.

The challenge for CSIS will be to spot which of the refugees have been singled out, which are turning or have been turned, and then figure out what to do with them. Arrest them, turn them into double-agents, use them as unwitting conduits of misinformation in order to spoil terrorist plans -- pick up any Ludlum potboiler if you need ideas about what spies and counter-spies do.

Of course, the government can't speak in generalities like this. This could be construed as racial profiling. So the government will speak only of specific individuals. That'll keep the press happy.