Canadian PM welcomes Syrian refugees, including Armenian family, in Toronto airport

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has welcomed the first plane of Syrian refugees as they arrived in Toronto, the Daily Mail reports.
The country is pushing forward with a pledge to resettle 25,000 Syrians fleeing conflict by the end of February.
In contrast, the United States plan to take in just 10,000 over the next year, and even that is provoking opposition.
It comes as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump caused a worldwide uproar with a proposal to temporarily block Muslims from entering the U.S.
Protests erupted around the country against Donald Trump in the wake of his controversial remarks.
Crowds gathered outside his midtown hotel in New York and opposite a New Hampshire venue where he was speaking on Thursday to condemn his comments.
Meanwhile, Trudeau welcomed 163 refugees as they arrived on a military plane.
The flight from Jordan arrived just before midnight carrying the first of two large groups of
Syrian refugees to arrive in the country by government aircraft.
Trudeau greeted some of the families to come through processing. The first family was Kevork Jamkossian, a Syrian-Armenian gynecologist from Aleppo, his wife Georgina Zires, a lab technician, and their 16-month-old daughter Madeleine.
“We really would like to thank you for all this hospitality and the warm welcome,” the father said to Trudeau through an interpreter. “We felt ourselves at home.”
“You are home. Welcome home,” Trudeau responded.
“We suffered a lot. Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise,’ Jamkossian said later.
Families were given teddy bears and winter clothing. Trudeau earlier thanked staff and volunteers who were processing the refugees.
“This is a wonderful night, where we get to show not just a planeload of new Canadians what Canada is all about, we get to show the world how to open our hearts and welcome in people who are fleeing extraordinarily difficult situations,” Trudeau said.
All 10 of Canada’s provincial premiers support taking in the refugees and members of the opposition, including the Conservative party, attended the welcoming late Thursday. Trudeau was also joined by the ministers of immigration, health and defense, as well as Ontario’s premier and Toronto’s mayor.
In the US, several Republican governors have tried to stop the arrival of Syrian refugees in their states in the wake of the deadly attacks blamed on Islamic extremists in Paris and California.