Since November 2015, Syrian refugees have been “welcomed” to Canada in an unprecedented “Rapid Impact” resettlement policy, which blends public and private sponsorship. Over 50,000 Syrians were granted refugee status and automatic Permanent Residency as of December 2017. Yet, relative to other receiving countries, Canada resettled a uniquely vulnerable sub-group of Syrian refugees (very low SES, very low rates of Arabic literacy, mostly rural, with large family sizes and drastic medical/dental needs). We present findings from a recent pilot project with 41 Syrian newcomer refugee mothers in Toronto, Canada (November 2016-May 2017). Our team involves three co-investigators (all Sociology faculty), five graduate student RAs (all native-level Arabic speakers: from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and U.S. respectively), and five undergraduates (including three native-level Arabic speakers from Syria and Libya, respectively). Mothers were interviewed twice: Wave 1 within first four months of “landing”; Wave 2 before “Month 13," when government and/or private sponsorship ends. An even distribution of GAR (government assisted) and PSR (privately sponsored) refugees were recruited. We find that Syrian refugees are cognizant of being “welcomed” by the Canadian government and everyday Canadian citizens as a highly-marked, fetishized, relatively desirable group of “newcomers." Refugee mothers observe that the warm welcome they experience is predicated upon the Canadian ascription of visible and invisible traits & meaning to presumed markers of class, urban/rural, race, ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and religion. In connecting refugees’ own observations of their resettlement to the stated aims and goals of the Liberal government, the welcoming of Syrian newcomers can be understood as a political and social staging of the success of 50 years of official Canadian multicultural policy as an anecdote to American and European xenophobia and nativism. In other words, it is a staging of Canadian tolerance as anecdote to American and European anti-Muslim and anti-MENA racism. In turn, this "tolerance" rests upon a "fragile obligation," (involving logics of credit/creditors and debt/debtors) in which Syrian refugee gratitude begets Canadian gratification and Syrian refugee discontent begets Canadian condemnation.