Racial Profiling

I was talking to a refugee friend of mine the other evening and he was telling me about how he tried to use the Western Union franchise inside a local Money Mart to send a couple hundred dollars to his wife, whose father is in the hospital. Since she is in India, alone with their two children, and she has been caring for her father, who now requires frequent blood transfusions, she has been unable to work and therefore my friend wanted to send her a bit to help her and his kids get by.

When his wife had not received the money within the expected time, my friend returned to the Money Mart to enquire about what had happened. Due to a US directive (Western Union is a US company), his money transfer had been blocked simply because of his name. Since he has an Arab name, he was unable to send a relatively meagre amount of money to help his troubled family. He has not been in trouble with the law. There is no other reason that this happened other than his name.

This treatment by a company operating in Canada is absolutely disgusting.

Western Union Story Link