Canadians rally at United States embassies to protest travel ban

Reacting to Donald Trump’s travel ban, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen says Canadian dual citizens will be allowed to travel to the US and Canada will offer temporary residency to people stranded here as a result of the ban. He said that people from those seven countries who have a valid Canadian permanent residency card can still enter the United States.

More than 200 Canadian technology company founders, executives and investors said on Sunday that Ottawa should immediately give temporary residency to those displaced by Trump’s order.

“We have been assured that Canadian citizens travelling on Canadian passports will be dealt with in the usual process”, said a spokeswoman for the prime minister’s office, in a statement.

Moss said her group sprung up literally overnight in response to the immigration order, which bans people who hold passports from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. Hussen said his department had been in contact with American officials throughout the weekend. Yesterday, under the hashtag #WelcomeToCanada, Trudeau tweeted those fleeing persecution, war and terror will be welcomed to Canada regardless of their faith.

Justin Trudeau’s “Welcome to Canada” trended in Canada, with almost 600,000 likes and almost 350,000 re-tweets of Trudeau’s post at the time of going press.

Trudeau posted a picture on Twitter where he is greeting a Syrian child back in 2015 at the Toronto airport.

The recently signed Executive Order to block entry of citizens from seven countries has already impacted several in our community.

The prime minister oversaw the arrival of more than 39,000 Syrian refugees shortly after he was elected. But for Canadians it became personal when it was learned that his family had relatives in British Columbia and had been trying to legally immigrate to Canada before giving up in desperation and taking to the sea.

Air Canada, the country’s other major airline, said it was complying with the order but did not comment on whether it had yet denied travel to any passengers. And since 2012, the US has also been included on the Canadian government’s list of Designated Countries of Origin that “do not normally produce refugees”.

Daniel Weinstock, a law professor at McGill University, said one of his Muslim-Canadian colleagues backed out of his U.S.travel plans.

Opposition leader Rona Ambrose, for example, had said nothing about the ban by mid-day Sunday and then released a relatively cautious series of tweets.

Late Saturday, after protests against the order broke out at airports across the USA, a federal judge granted a stay on immediate deportations for people from the seven affected nations who had just arrived at US airports with valid visas.

One Canadian tech entrepreneur, Kaz Nejatian, said he received over 50 CVs overnight Saturday after he put out a call on social media looking for people affected by Trump’s travel ban.

Where this will eventually take Canada’s $2-billion-a-day business with the U.S.is an unknown.