From adaptability to vulnerability: Changes in admission criteria and refugee participation in social assistance

2022/03/28 Leave a comment

The Toronto Sun headline, as typical, spins the study with the header Canada’s immigration laws deter economic independence among some refugees whereas the article is more nuanced in how it characterizes the change, a valid change to address humanitarian objectives. And as the study notes, the gap decreases over time:

The 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) replaced the Immigration Act, 1976 as the primary legislation guiding immigration in Canada. It marked a major policy shift—from an emphasis on adaptability to vulnerability—in the admission of resettled refugees. Prior to the IRPA, those awarded refugee status had to demonstrate their capacity for economic independence in Canada. This would normally be within a year after arrival and would consider age, educational attainment, skills, presence of family members and other factors. The IRPA significantly altered Canada’s refugee priorities by committing to admission on humanitarian grounds and prioritizing those in need of protection (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2016; Lu et al., 2020).

Changes in selection policy had a particular impact on the characteristics of government-assisted refugees (GARs). For example, prior to the IRPA (1997 to 2001), 53% of newly admitted GARs had less than a high school education. However, this percentage increased to 74% among GARs who arrived after the IRPA (2005 to 2009). The share of lone-parent GARs also increased from 6% in the pre-IRPA cohort to 12% in the post-IRPA cohort. Because of these changes, refugees admitted after the IRPA may be more prone to relying on social assistance than those who arrived before the IRPA. This is less likely for privately sponsored refugees (PSRs) who are more likely to have family or friends in Canada and are better positioned to find employment through their sponsors or familial networks.

A recent article published in International Migration compared the long-term use of social assistance among resettled refugees arriving under pre-IRPA guidelines (1997 to 2001), during the transition period (2002 to 2004), and after the IRPA (2005 to 2009). Authors Lisa Kaida (McMaster University), Max Stick (McMaster University and Statistics Canada) and Feng Hou (Statistics Canada) used the Longitudinal Immigration Database to determine whether resettled refugees arriving after the introduction of the IRPA were more likely to rely on social assistance than earlier cohorts. The analysis examined GARs aged 20 to 54 at landing. The social assistance rates among PSRs were also calculated for comparative purposes.

Chart 1 displays the social assistance rates of resettled refugees (GARs and PSRs) admitted during the three periods. The social assistance rate is defined as the percentage of refugees whose family received social assistance income in a specific tax year. The results show that two years after landing, transition-period (71%) and post-IRPA (72%) GARs received social assistance at higher rates than pre-IRPA (66%) GARs. In contrast to GARs, pre-IRPA PSRs had higher social assistance rates (33%) than transition-period (30%) and post-IRPA (28%) PSRs in year 2.

While the social assistance rates of GARs dropped each year after landing, the rates for transition-period and post-IRPA GARs declined more slowly than those for the pre-IRPA cohort. The gap in social assistance rates between pre-IRPA and transition-period GARs continued to widen until year 8 (14 percentage points). The gap between the pre- and post-IRPA cohorts peaked in year 5 (16 percentage points).

After year 8 (for the transition-period cohort) and after year 5 (for the post-IRPA cohort), the gap in social assistance rates narrowed between these cohorts and the pre-IRPA cohort. By year 10, the difference in social assistance rates between the pre-IRPA cohort and the other two cohorts fell below 10 percentage points. Labour market characteristics of transition-period and post-IRPA GARs, especially their lower employment rates compared with pre-IRPA GARs, largely explained the differences in social assistance rates.

Social assistance rates of PSR cohorts slowly declined up to years 5 and 6, and then hovered at around 20% to 25% until year 10. The difference in social assistance rates between pre-IRPA, and transition-period and post-IRPA PSRs remained small from years 3 to 10.

The findings suggest that GARs arriving after the introduction of the IRPA took longer to integrate into the Canadian labour market and become economically independent than those arriving prior to the IRPA. However, transition-period and post-IRPA GARs started to close the gap with their pre-IRPA counterparts five to eight years after arrival. By the 10th year, their rates of social assistance decreased to 35%.

Source: From adaptability to vulnerability: Changes in admission criteria and refugee participation in social assistance

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Streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a ‘two-tiered,’ ‘racialized’ system, opposition says

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

Interesting that a Conservative MP, Brad Redekopp, raised the issue, given the party’s close connection to Ukrainian Canadians and that 14 percent of his riding, Saskatoon West, is of Ukrainian ancestry:

Opposition parties says the Liberal government’s streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a two-tiered, racialized system that prioritizes Ukrainian immigrants over refugees from other conflict zones, including Afghanistan.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser appeared before the House of Commons immigration committee Thursday, where he faced questions about the differences between the government’s new special program and its dedicated refugee resettlement initiatives. During the meeting, Conservative committee member Brad Redekopp accused the government of prioritizing Ukrainian immigrants over Afghan refugees.

“Under your watch, it seems like you’ve set up a racialized system, a two-tiered system, where white Europeans come in faster than people from Afghanistan. How do you explain that?” Mr. Redekopp asked the minister.

Mr. Fraser rejected Mr. Redekopp’s claim, saying the situation in Ukraine demands a different response. He noted that Ukrainians can find their way to other Western countries for Canadian processing and biometrics screening more easily than Afghans.

“It has more to do with their ability to leave Ukraine, compared to … those who don’t have that ability to leave Afghanistan, than it does a decision by the federal government to be more kind to one group of people than another,” Mr. Fraser said.

He added that the government opted to offer streamlined immigration measures to Ukrainians, rather than a dedicated refugee program, because European counterparts and the Ukrainian Canadian community have indicated that most Ukrainians who come to Canada will want to eventually return home. This is not the case with people coming from Afghanistan, he said, hence the need for a refugee program.

“With respect to Afghanistan, I wish the circumstances were the same. I don’t have the same hope that it will be safe for the people that we are welcoming permanently as refugees to return home one day, despite their potential desire to do so, and that’s allowed us to create difference responses for the unique circumstances.”

Jenny Kwan, NDP immigration critic, also said the government has made it easier for Ukrainians compared with refugees from other countries. She noted what witnesses have told the committee regarding the discrepancy.

“They all said that they support the special measures for Ukraine, but what they’re concerned about is that it’s not being applied elsewhere. All the witnesses agree that government should extend those special immigration measures to other regions also experiencing conflict, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Hong Kong, et cetera,” Ms. Kwan said during the committee meeting.

Mr. Fraser said he wants to see the impact of the special measures for Ukrainians first before considering any similar streamlined programs.

Last year, the government committed to resettling 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan, and so far more than 9,500 have arrived in Canada since August. Much like the Liberal government’s Syrian refugee resettlement program, Afghan refugees have access to federal services and the Resettlement Assistance Program.

More than 10,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Canada since Jan. 1. Most travelled to Canada under their own devices before the government announced the special immigration measures last week, Mr. Fraser said.

The Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel eliminates most of the normal visa requirements and allows Ukrainians to stay in Canada for up to three years if they pass a background check and security screening. The measures are offered through the immigration stream; as a result, Ukrainians are not considered refugees and will not have access to the same support.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress recently called on the federal government to implement departure and arrival plans to assist Ukrainians with travel to Canada, provide financial support for a transitional period and encourage provincial governments to recruit and sponsor displaced people. The UCC is also urging the government to provide funding for settlement agencies, which could help Ukrainians co-ordinate transport, housing and health care and assist with work permit applications.

The government is in the process of setting up a family reunification program that would allow relatives in Canada to sponsor family members from Ukraine to move here permanently. Details are expected in the coming weeks.

Source: Streamlined immigration program for Ukrainians creates a ‘two-tiered,’ ‘racialized’ system, opposition says

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Biden administration announces asylum system overhaul: What you need to know

2022/03/26 Leave a comment

Useful overview:

The Biden administration announced the final version of its long-awaited U.S. asylum overhaul Thursday, aiming to speed up processing at the border and alleviate backlogs throughout the country’s immigration courts.

Fixing asylum, a process that can drag out for years, was one of President Biden’s campaign promises. The overhaul represents the most significant change to the nation’s immigration system since he took office.

The new policy is scheduled to take effect May 28, two months after it’s published in the Federal Register. The change won’t affect most asylum seekers as long as a pandemic-related rule limiting access at the border remains in force. But the new system will probably be in place once that rule is lifted and the uptick in asylum requests begins.

“The current system for handling asylum claims at our borders has long needed repair,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a news release. “Through this rule, we are building a more functional and sensible asylum system to ensure that individuals who are eligible will receive protection more swiftly, while those who are not eligible will be rapidly removed.”

Asylum seekers will now have their claims heard by an asylum officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services within several months, if the plan works as intended, instead of waiting years for a final determination from an immigration judge.

The Homeland Security and Justice departments released a draft proposal in August. After reading through 5,000 public comments about the draft, officials on a call with reporters Wednesday said they made some changes but maintained the overall framework of the proposal. The officials — from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts — spoke to reporters on condition that they not be named.

Under the rule, anyone denied protection by an asylum officer could request a reconsideration from Citizenship and Immigration Services within seven days. If turned down, the person could ask that an immigration judge review their application and later bring their case to the Board of Immigration Appeals and federal circuit courts. After all bids are exhausted, or if none are pursued, the person would be subject to deportation. The rule does not apply to unaccompanied children who arrive without a parent

Supporters say the policy improves what has long been considered a scary process for traumatized migrants. Instead of having to initially recount their worst experiences in an adversarial court setting as they defend themselves against deportation, migrants will now be able to make their case in an asylum office.

But many advocates worry the changes weaken constitutional due process rights for asylum seekers by essentially expanding the so-called expedited removal process, a mechanism used to quickly turn back immigrants apprehended at the border.

Richard Caldarone, who manages litigation at the Tahirih Justice Center, a national nonprofit serving immigrants who fled gender-based violence, said the new process serves no significant humanitarian purpose because it doesn’t give trauma survivors enough time to find a lawyer, gather evidence and recover.

“Survivors of trauma will not be able to recite what happened to them 72 hours after arriving in a safe place to a government official,” he said. “Given the emphasis that DHS has placed on speed for asylum seekers, this will be like the former process — designed in a way that will systematically fail to elicit people’s best asylum claims.”

A better system, Caldarone said, would give people a year before their asylum hearing to prepare and then quickly provide a decision as to whether they could stay or be deported. That would allow people to heal from trauma and lead to fewer appeals, he argued.

The backlog of pending immigration court cases has exploded in recent months, reaching nearly 1.6 million by December, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data research center at Syracuse University. It has tripled since 2016.

Under the new system, asylum officers will grant decisions within roughly 90 days. Immigration court appeals will generally take another 90 days, officials said.

During his first year in office, Biden took roughly 300 executive actions on immigration, nearly a third of them to reverse course on Trump-era policies, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

One area he did not change: For the last two years, the border has been closed to the vast majority of asylum seekers under a restrictive pandemic-era policy initiated by former President Trump. The policy, known as Title 42, invokes a 1944 public health statute to quickly expel migrants who attempt to enter the U.S. in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Among more than 1.7 million people detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the southwest border during fiscal year 2021, 61% were expelled under Title 42, according to agency data.

Experts say those rapid removals under Title 42 resulted in an increase in unauthorized crossings into the U.S. by people who would have otherwise requested asylum at an official port of entry. The rapid removals back to Mexico also led to repeated border crossing attempts by migrants — inflating the number of Customs and Border Protection apprehensions.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally ended that policy for children traveling without a parent, saying their expulsion “is not warranted to protect the public health.” Immigrant advocates and Democratic congressional leaders have argued that the policy is illegal and have ramped up calls in recent weeks to also end its application to adults traveling alone and parents traveling with their children.

But asylum seekers will see no substantial changes, even once the updates are in place, until the CDC decides to end Title 42 entirely. In recent weeks, as the response to the pandemic has changed within the U.S., federal officials have begun planningfor the possible end of the policy.

The asylum overhaul will be implemented in phases, though officials said they have yet to decide where to roll out the initial program and whether to target any specific population, such as single adults or families.

On a call with reporters last week, Mayorkas said the phased implementation of the new asylum system is designed to avoid straining Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency has teetered on bankruptcy, he added, and was “virtually dismantled” under the Trump administration, whose immigration approach deterred many immigrants from filing applications before the pandemic further reduced the agency’s caseload.

“We have to be mindful of the resource constraints of the asylum division in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as we rebuild that agency,” he said, noting that the agency is almost entirely funded by application fees.

Under the proposed rule, the agency estimated it would need to hire 800 new employees and spend $180 million to be able to handle 75,000 cases annually.

Before the pandemic, migrants encountered near the border were screened by agency asylum officers for fear of persecution. Those who passed the initial screening would have their cases moved to the immigration courts, where a judge would decide whether they qualified for asylum or another form of protection and could stay in the U.S.

Meanwhile, they were detained or released pending a final court hearing. Immigrants facing deportation don’t have the same right to a publicly funded attorney as people in criminal proceedings, and most represent themselves.

To qualify for asylum, immigrants must prove a fear of persecution in their home country based on one of five protected categories: political opinion, race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group.

Officials hope the new asylum policy will curb unauthorized migration.

“The ability to stay in the United States for years waiting for an initial decision may motivate unauthorized border crossings by individuals who otherwise would not have sought to enter the United States and who lack a meritorious protection claim,” the rule states.

The goal is also to reduce the stress for those who ultimately receive asylum or other immigration protections, according to the rule, as currently, “they are left in limbo as to whether they might still be removed, are unable to lawfully work until their asylum application has been granted or has remained pending for several months, and are unable to petition for qualified family members, some of whom may still be at risk of harm.”

Source: Biden administration announces asylum system overhaul: What you need to know

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Non-white refugees fleeing Ukraine detained in EU immigration facilities

2022/03/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

Non-white students who have fled Ukraine have been detained by EU border authorities in what has been condemned as “clearly discriminatory” and “not acceptable”.

An investigation by The Independent, in partnership with Lighthouse Reports and other media partners, reveals that Ukraine residents of African origin who have crossed the border to escape the war have been placed in closed facilities, with some having been there for a number of weeks.

At least four students who have fled Vladimir Putin’s invasion are being held in a long-term holding facility Lesznowola, a village 40km from the Polish capital Warsaw, with little means of communication with the outside world and no legal advice.

One of the students said they were stopped by officials as they crossed the border and were given “no choice” but to sign a document they did not understand before they were then taken to the camp. They do not know how long they will be held there.

A Nigerian man currently detained said he was “scared” about what will happen to him after being held in the facility for more than three weeks.

Polish border police have confirmed that 52 third-country nationals who have fled Ukraine are currently being held in detention facilities in Poland.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said they were aware of three other facilities in Poland where people non-Ukrainians who have fled the war are being detained.

Separately, a Nigerian student who fled the Russian invasion is understood to have been detained in Estonia after travelling to the country to join relatives, and is now being threatened with deportation

This is despite a EU protection directive dated 4 March which states that third country nationals studying or working in Ukraine should be admitted to the EU temporarily on humanitarian grounds.

Maria Arena, chair of the EU parliament’s subcommittee on human rights, said: “International students in Ukraine, as well as Ukrainians, are at risk and risking their lives in the country. Detention, deportation or any other measure that does not grant them protection is not acceptable.”

The findings of the investigation, which was carried out in collaboration with Lighhtouse Reports, Spiegal, Mediapart and Radio France, comes after it emerged that scores of Black and Asian refugees fleeing Ukraine were experiencing racial discrimination while trying to make border crossing last month.

‘They took us here to the camp… I’m scared’

Gabriel*, 29, had been studying trade and economics in Kharkov before war broke out. The Nigerian national left the city and arrived at the border on 27 February, where he says his phone was confiscated by Polish border guards and he was given “no option” but to sign a form he did not understand.

“It was written in Polish. I didn’t know what I was signing. I said I wouldn’t sign, but they insisted I signed it and that if not I would go to jail for five months,” he said in a recorded conversation with a Nigerian activist.

The student said he was then taken to court, where there was no interpreter to translate what was being said so that he could understand, and then taken to a detention centre in the small village of Lesznowola.

“It is a closed camp inside a forest,” said Gabriel, speaking from the facility. “There’s no freedom. Some people have been here more than nine months. Some have gone mad. I’m scared.

“We escaped Ukraine very horrible experience, the biggest risk of my life […] Everything was scary and I thought that was the end of it. And now we are in detention.”

Gabriel said there are at least two other Nigerian students in the camp, along with students from Cameroon, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and French African nations.

Guards at the centre said inmates have their mobile phones confiscated, with only those who have a second sim card given a phone without a camera.

Many can only communicate with the outside world via email – and even this is said to be limited to certain times.

Another individual detained at the centre is Paul, 20, a Cameroonian who had been studying management and language at Agrarian University Bila Tserkva in Kyiv for six months when the war started.

His brother, Victor, who is in Cameroon, said Paul had told him that he had been apprehended while crossing the border and that on 2 March, a Polish judge ordered that he be transferred to Lesznowola detention centre.

“From his explanation, the camp doesn’t seem like one that welcomes people fleeing from the war in Ukraine. It’s a camp that has been existing and has people that came to seek for asylum. No one knows why he is being detained,” he said.

Victor said that Paul was given seven days to appeal the decision to detain him, but that he has been unable to access the internet in order to file the appeal in time.

“Since that day he filed the appeal, police and guards try to restrict them. He used to get five minutes of internet but on that day they stopped letting them use the internet. The phone he used to communicate with me was blocked. Maybe it’s because they realised that the issue was taking on a legal dimension,” he said.

‘He’s not allowed to be in Estonia’

This investigation has also heard reports that a Nigerian student, Reuben, is facing deportation from Estonia after being detained having fled the war in Ukraine.

Prior to his arrival in the eastern European country, 32-year-old Reuben emailed the head of International House, a service centre that helps internationals in Estonia to communicate with the state, explaining that he wanted to join his cousin living in the country.

The head of the organisation Leonardo Ortega responded by letter that he may relocate to Estonia.

Reuben, who attended Bila Tserkva National Agrarian University in Ukraine and is married to a Ukrainian woman, arrived on 9 March through Poland with his cousin Peter.

After being delayed for three hours at the Estonia border, the pair were escorted to a police station, according to Peter, 30, who has an Estonian residency permit.

He said three police officers escorted his cousin away with his luggage and said he would be detained for two days themn deported back to Nigeria.

The officers reportedly advised that the 32-year-old would be banned from entering any Schengen country for the next five years; his phone was confiscated and he’s been in detention since.

“A few officers said ‘he’s not allowed to be in Estonia’. Even after asking for international protection, we were told that my cousin needs to have a lawyer to fight his case, but most of the lawyers I initially contacted refused to take my cousin’s case,” said Peter.

“He received an email in advance saying it was okay to come – and after everything we went through, the next thing they want to deport and ban him for five years. I don’t know why deportation came into the picture.”

Criney, a London-based campaigner who has been supporting the affected students on a voluntary basis, said there was an “emerging pattern of arbitrary detention of students coming out of Ukraine fleeing the war”.

“There are other cases in Austria and Germany with regards to students who have applied for asylum or asked for permits to remain,” the campaigner said.

Detained ‘for the purpose of identity verification’

The EU directive on 4 March aims to help refugees fleeing the invasion to stay for at least one year in one country and also have access to the labour market and education.

It states that it also applies to “nationals of third countries other than Ukraine residing legally in Ukraine who are unable to return in safe and durable conditions to their country or region of origin”.

This can include third-country nationals who were studying or working in Ukraine, it states, adding that this cohort should “in any event be admitted into the union on humanitarian grounds”, without requiring valid travel documents, to ensure “safe passage with a view to returning to their country or region of origin”.

Michał Dworczyk, a top aide to the Polish prime minister, said when war broke out that “everyone escaping the war will be received in Poland, including people without passports”.

But the Polish government has admitted that it is sending some of this cohort to closed facilities once they cross the border.

In a tweet on 2 March, the Polish ministry of internal affairs and administration said: “Ukrainians are fleeing the war, people of other nationalities are also fleeing. All those who do not have documents and cannot prove Ukrainian citizenship are carefully checked. If there is a need, they go to closed detention centres.”

In a letter to a member of the EU Parliament, Poland’s border police admitted that 52 third country nationals who had fled from Ukraine had been taken to closed detention centres in the first three weeks of the war.

The letter stated that this was necessary “to carry out administrative proceedings for granting international protection or issuing a decision on obliging a foreigner to return”.

Ryan Schroeder, press officer at the IOM, said the organisation was aware of three other facilities in Poland where “third-country nationals arriving from Ukraine, who lack proper travel documentation, are brought to for the purpose of identity verification”.

The Polish government, the Polish police and the Estonian authorities declined to comment on the allegations.

A spokesperson for the Polish border force said it “couldn’t give any detail about the procedures on foreigners because of the protection on personal data”, adding that it is “the court which takes the decision each time to place people in guarded centres for foreigners”.

‘Clearly unsatisfactory and discriminatory’

Steve Peers, a professor of EU law in the UK, says that even if member states choose not to apply temporary protection to legal residents of Ukraine, they should give them “simplified entry, humanitarian support and safe passage to their country of origin”.

“In my view this is obviously a case where students could not have applied for a visa and might not meet the other usual criteria to cross the external borders, yet there are overwhelming reasons to let them cross the border anyway on humanitarian grounds. There are no good grounds for immigration detention in the circumstances,” he added.

Jeff Crisp, a former head of policy, development and evaluation at UNHCR, said it was “clearly unsatisfactory and discriminatory” for third country nationals who have fled from Ukraine to be held in detention centres in EU states, “not least because of the trauma they will have experienced in their efforts to leave Ukraine and find safety elsewhere”.

He added: “They should be released immediately and treated on an equal basis with all others who have been forced to leave Ukraine.”

It comes after the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned this week that, although he had been “humbled” by the outpouring of support seen by communities welcoming Ukrainian refugees, many minorities – often foreigners who had been studying or working there – had described a very different experience.

“We also bore witness to the ugly reality, that some Black and Brown people fleeing Ukraine – and other wars and conflicts around the world – have not received the same treatment as Ukrainian refugees,” he said.

“They reported disturbing incidents of discrimination, violence, and racism. These acts of discrimination are unacceptable, and we are using our many channels and resources to make sure that all people are protected equally.”

Mr Grandi appealed to countries, in particular those neighbouring Ukraine, to continue to allow entry to anyone fleeing the conflict “without discrimination on grounds of race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin and regardless of their immigration status”.

*Names have been changed

Source: Non-white refugees fleeing Ukraine detained in EU immigration facilities

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US Special Immigration Program Refers More Than 5,000 Afghan Refugees to Canada – Voice of America

2022/03/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

The U.S. State Department has referred more than 5,000 Afghan refugees who were seeking admission to the United States to a parallel program in Canada, where waiting times for permanent residence are shorter.

State Department officials confirmed to VOA those referred to the special immigration program are not simultaneously going through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).

“We are working with Canada to refer up to 5,000 refugees to Canada, independent of our ongoing efforts for U.S. resettlement,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA.

On the Canadian side, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said Afghan refugees referred by the U.S. are coming to Canada from third countries, where they have been located since they fled Afghanistan.

Masuma Haidari, 37 and a software engineer in Afghanistan, is one of the people benefiting from the partnership between the two countries. She was able to leave Afghanistan in August 2021 and lived in North Macedonia for more than six months.

Private organizations helped her leave Afghanistan and find her way through the program that led her to Canada.

Haidari told VOA she was about to get the keys to her first apartment in Calgary, Canada.

“It’s not bad,” Haidari said. “The government helps us with money and we (must) manage to cover all costs.”

But with her background in software engineering and having worked for the Afghan government, she hopes it will be useful in her new Canadian life.

“I think that the technical experiences will be useful in Canada. I will try to [transfer] my degree, my education and also I will be ready to find a job in the IT industry,” she added.

Though Haidari is able to start a new life, thousands of people are still hoping to leave Afghanistan.

Rescue efforts

U.S. military veterans, former intelligence and defense officials and others have dedicated their time to rescue those still in Afghanistan through newly formed groups like Operation North Star, which is all volunteer, or Task Force Pineapple, which is a public-private partnership.

Getting people out of Afghanistan is just part of the problem.

According to the Operation North Star website, they have almost 500 Afghans in third countries and more than 2,000 Afghans in safe homes in Afghanistan. Equally challenging has been guiding the Afghans through the complex process to resettle in the United States, including finding safe homes, leaving Afghanistan, finding a third country, applying to a refugee program and arriving in a new country.

The U.S. immigration system includes a patchwork of complex laws for regulating the flow of refugees seeking to enter the United States. The U.S. manages a strict vetting process to determine who to accept for resettlement and the process can take two to five years.

Slow U.S. processing is prompting some private groups to look elsewhere for a permanent home for the evacuees, with immigrant-friendly Canada emerging as a favored destination.

So far in Fiscal 2022, which began October 1, 2021, 133 Afghans were admitted into the U.S. through USRAP. In Fiscal 2021, that number was 872. Through the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is for those who served as interpreters and translators or were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government, the U.S. admitted 1,545 refugees in Fiscal 2022.

Jordan Kane, a volunteer at U.S.-based Operation North Star, said it has been difficult to secure U.S. refugee status for Afghans who have been recommended for relocation by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees or a designated NGO. After the referral, it still takes at least two years for applicants to arrive in the United States.

“Thousands of Afghan refugees who had secured limited referrals to the U.S. resettlement process were given an option to be switched over to the Canadian process, with women leaders fleeing Taliban threats receiving preference,” Kane told VOA.

The U.S. Refugee Admissions program was dramatically cut under the Trump administration, leaving fewer resources within the government and the resettlement agencies to handle the significant increase of refugee applications and arrivals.

Resettlement in Canada

Once the U.S. identifies Afghan refugees who meet eligibility and admissibility requirements, they are then accepted for resettlement to Canada.

“As government-assisted refugees, Afghan refugees become permanent residents upon arrival and have access to the Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP),” according to Jeffrey MacDonald, communications officer at IRCC.

The Canadian government provides temporary housing and up to 12 months of income support.

“Monthly income support levels for shelter, food and incidentals are guided by provincial or territorial social assistance rates where the refugee resides and vary depending on family size, configuration and city of residence,” MacDonald said in an email to VOA.

One refugee, whose case was transferred to Canada, is identified for security reasons only as “Farishta.” She was a women’s rights activist and prosecutor in the office of the Afghan attorney general.

“The Canadian program under which Farishta is applying is unique,” Kane said. “Like the U.S., Canada has a program for resettling Afghans who worked for them, who are mostly male military interpreters. However, unlike the U.S., Canada also has a program for admitting other groups of Afghans targeted by the Taliban, including female leaders, which is great.”

The Women at Risk Program recognizes the women and girls particularly vulnerable in refugee situations and prioritizes their resettlement to Canada.

“But Canada shouldn’t be the only country looking out for women like Farishta,” Kane said, adding, “the U.S. and other NATO allies need to copy this program to make sure we are not leaving Afghan women behind.”

The Canadian government has committed to accept 40,000 Afghan refugees. Included in that number are the 5,000 people being referred through the partnership with the United States. From August 2021 to March 2022, the country has admitted 8,815 under all available refugee categories.

Canada has a biometric verification process that refugees must complete before they enter Canada, according to Oliver Thorne, who is the executive director at the Vancouver-based Veterans Transition Network.

“Although these are Afghans that risked their lives to support and in many cases, save the lives of Canadian soldiers, our government policy will not allow them into Canada without biometric verification,” Thorne told VOA.

Thorne said the Canadian government policy needs to align with the urgency of these evacuation efforts and allow for biometrics to be done after arrival in Canada.

“Without this, evacuations will proceed at a trickle pace, leaving brave and deserving Afghans at risk of reprisals from the Taliban,” he added.

MacDonald, of the IRCC, responded that the biggest hurdle “is not the processing capacity of the government of Canada, it’s situational and environmental factors on the ground in Afghanistan. These are challenges that we are working on every day, there’s no lack of effort on the part of the government of Canada.”

Nevertheless, the private groups credit Canada for taking in a number of Afghans who might not be eligible for resettlement elsewhere. Most countries are offering visas to a limited number of Afghans who worked directly for them, refugee advocates said.

As for Farishta, she had hoped to resettle in the United States, Kane said.

“The United States was Farishta’s first choice, because she has more friends there, but she considers Canada to be a great option. … Two reasons for this: she, like many educated Afghans, speaks fluent English already. Second, Canada has more generous resettlement benefits than the U.S.,” Kane said

Source: US Special Immigration Program Refers More Than 5,000 Afghan Refugees to Canada – Voice of America

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Israel: Immigration minister blasts hypocritical’ neglect of Ethiopian refugees

2022/03/16 Leave a comment

Of note:

Immigration and Integration Minister Pnina Tamno-Shata and Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai got into a heated exchange at a government meeting on the Ukraine refugee crisis Monday.

At the meeting, government ministers spoke out against Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked’s newly announced framework that would see all Ukrainians with relatives in Israel allowed entry into the country.

Agriculture Minister Oded Forer said, “We need to stop with the self-flagellation. We are going above and beyond for a country that does not border Ukraine. Britain is only taking in 2,000 people.”

Shaked said, “The government and the ministers should boast and praise the integration operation. No other country is taking in [refugees] on such a scale.  They’ve taken in 5,000 people in exemplary order. Nachman is talking about the negative and not just the positive. We should be proud of what we are doing.”

Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman noted, “When the State of Israel was under fire, we didn’t see anyone in Europe speak out for us. We are making a supreme effort.”

Science and Technology Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen said the policy balanced “humanitarian needs with the significant challenge we face. The immigration wave is estimated at tens of thousands of people, which is estimated in billions [of dollars], and that is the important challenge.

We shouldn’t rule out settling the immigrants in lands we have a strategic interest in settling, of course, through investment in their needs and the provision of everything they need.”

Communications Minister Yoaz Handel said the immigrants should be settled in the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights, the Negev [region], the Galilee, and in the country’s east.

When Handel told Shai, “I didn’t see anyone speak out when there were refugees from Africa,” Shai responded: “We are from Europe.”

Shai’s comment angered Tamno-Shata, who told him: “Take it back. That’s not funny.”

Lieberman attempted to ease tensions, telling Tamno-Shata it was just a joke.

But Tamno-Shata retorted: “It’s not a joke. It’s the truth. I work tirelessly for the benefit of the Law of Return from Ukraine …. We will immigrate them well, but I want the voice of Ethiopian Jews heard. What we have here is the hypocrisy of the white man.

“I demand the immediate extrication of those eligible for the Law of Return in Tigray and Ethiopia who have been at war for a year. None of those speaking up here spoke up for those eligible for the Law of Return from Ethiopia. This is simply hypocrisy of the white man,” she said.

Source: Immigration minister blasts hypocritical’ neglect of Ethiopian refugees

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Sears: Ottawa is backsliding on refugees. We cannot return to the contemptible policies of our past

2022/03/15 Leave a comment

A bit over the top, as he should understand some of the operational and considerations, even officials are overly cautious in their approach.

And fair or not, the Ukraine invasion and refugee flows are more fundamental, in terms of world and Canadian politics, than Afghanistan, where unfortunately all countries failed in getting peoples out quickly.

But of course, more should be done, and more quickly:

Canada’s nakedly racist immigration policies are not ancient history. It was only in the 1970s that they were finally wound down as policy, though the colour blindness of some immigration officials was never believable. The department is currently under investigation for allegations of years of systemic racism.

Canada had a racist screening system that was thinly veiled as “geographic” quotas only 50 years ago. Our quotas in those days permitted 1,000 immigrants per year from Asia — and one hundred times that from Europe. In recent years, we have won a global reputation for the openness and fairness of both our immigration and refugee screening processes. We have the most successful record in the world at immigration integration. But, occasionally some of the old impulses appear to push to the surface again.

The Trudeau government pledged that we would admit 40,000 Afghan refugees after the fall of Kabul last August. In the months since, we have welcomed less than 20 per cent of that pledge. Various bureaucracies have erected their usual obstacles when they are determined to slow walk a policy to failure. First they claimed they could not admit more of the desperate because they did not have screening facilities in Kabul. The EU removed that excuse by offering to share theirs.

The Department of Justice threw sand in the gears, as government lawyers do, saying, “Here’s why you can’t do that legally, minister!” Incredibly, they cited the prohibition on aiding “terrorism” if assistance were given to refugee claimants. It is absurdly transparent nonsense that several more expert Canadian lawyers have laughed at. Global Affairs and Public Safety, two ministries one would have thought had an important role, have been nudged aside by the intransigent foot draggers.

Of course we should open our doors to tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees as quickly as possible. However, where non-Muslim European refugees are concerned there appear to be different rules.

Ukrainians are being waved through because it is claimed they are “unlikely to stay.” Perhaps. But they will be welcomed into our vast Ukrainian Canadian community, and many may decide to stay. Many will bring skills and experience in high demand by employers. Few will need integration support, except perhaps in acquiring fluency in English or French.

But the stunning difference in political signalling by this government to one refugee community versus another is somewhat stomach turning. There have been half a dozen ministerial visits to Europe to ensure our aid flows in and their refugees can flow out.

The number of Canadian ministers who have gone to Pakistan to help speed up the transport and certification of Afghan refugees since the election? No prizes for guessing — none. The latest excuse for the tragic delay in getting Afghans who put their lives on the line to support Canadian soldiers, diplomats and journalists: “backlog.”

For decades, immigration departments have used the excuse that the years-long wait for refugees and immigrants to be processed is due to backlog. What would the response of a government be if, for example, the CRA said they could not get Canadians their tax reimbursement cheques out in less than 18 months because of backlog?

They would fix it: hire staff, whip the bureaucracy, and demand results or heads on a block. So why do we allow backlog to be the “dog ate my homework” excuse from immigration bureaucrats? Perhaps it’s because governments actually prefer their ability to choke the number of refugees — unless, of course, they’re from a country where millions of Canadian voters have roots and are demanding action.

So let us return to the days when ministers greeted refugees from war-torn hells at the airport, no matter which war had torn their lives apart. Let there not be even a scintilla of suspicion that we are sliding back to the contemptible refugee policy that we are so proud of having erased two generations ago.

Or we will wake up one morning to the news that the Taliban have murdered yet another Canada-bound refugee — one whose luck ran out after months of waiting for the silence from the immigration bureaucracy to finally end.

Source: Ottawa is backsliding on refugees. We cannot return to the contemptible policies of our past

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Ukraine: How citizenship and race play out in refugees’ movements in Europe

2022/03/14 Leave a comment

More nuanced explanation that in most articles:

As millions of refugees flee Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion, one question that has been raised is: Why have Ukrainians been welcomed into eastern Europe, unlike Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans? Is it because they are white?

Criticisms imply that the European Union treats refugees from the Global South differently, and that such treatment is based on race. Critics also highlight that Romania and Poland’s hospitality to Ukrainians stands in stark contrast to their past reluctance to accommodate refugees from Africa and the Middle East. Al Jazeera looks at the treatment of Black and Indian refugees at the Polish border.

Yet hasty interpretations that single out race as the primary force in refugee favouritism simplify geopolitical realities. They also ignore the EU legislative framework that produces categories of refugees based on nationality and citizenship.

Europe rests on a hierarchy of nations, with older EU members at the top of the pile followed by new members, and then countries being considered for membership in the EU. At the bottom of the pile is everyone else.

Geopolitics play a role

Commitments to welcoming one million Ukrainians to Polandand 500,000 to Romania are linked to these countries’ geographical proximity to the Ukrainian border.

Refugees usually head to the closest safe place. Think of the Syrian war: neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan resettled the largest number of Syrians. Turkey hosts close to four million, Lebanon over 800,000 and Jordan close to 700,000. 

Similarly, more than half of Eritrean refugees are in neighbouring Ethiopia and Sudan. Bangladesh also hosts the majority of Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar.

Ethnic composition and regional labour market flows also play a role. Poland is the primary EU destination country for Ukrainian migrants. By the end of 2020, a record number of a million and a half Ukrainians had migrated to Poland for work. 

In Ukraine, close to 160,000 people are ethnic Hungarians, and over 150,000 are of the Romanian minority. The Union of the Ukrainians in Romania is an ethnically based political party with a seat in the national parliament.

Ukrainians regularly cross regional borders for personal reasons, such as accessing medical care or visiting family.

Pre-existing affinities

Eastern Europe shares a common Soviet history and after the end of the Cold War in 1989, an anti-Russian sentiment. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, most eastern European states rejected communist ideas as being Russian-centric. Integration into the West and the adoption of liberal ideas of freedom, free market and democracy, have become synonymous with opposing Russian neo-imperialism.

Solidarity based on a similar history of oppression is common across the former Eastern Bloc countries (the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary). A shared memory of Russian aggression makes the pain of Ukrainians more intelligible to other eastern Europeans.

Linguistic similarities between Ukrainian and Polish make Poland more accessible to Ukrainian migrants. Both languages are Slavic and have long influenced each other. The Polish and Ukrainians close to the border largely understand what each other is saying.

Most countries from the former Eastern Bloc are Christian Orthodox. Not only is Christian Orthodoxy intertwined with national identity but Orthodoxy has also flourished since the fall of Communism. In Ukraine, about 39 per cent of the population self-identified as Orthodox in 1991 — by 2015, the number had doubled.

Ukraine’s position

Ukraine is not a member of the EU, but it is a signatory to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the 2014 EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

The 2014 Association Agreement was key in defining Ukraine as a European country with shared common history and values. It also paved the way for granting Ukrainians visa-free access to the Schengen Area, which comprises all the EU members except Ireland, as well as Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein, for up to 90 days.

Both agreements outline the foreign policy expectations of countries on the path to EU integration. These agreements legally produce different categories of migrants. Ukrainians are on the path to integration into the European labour market, unlike third-country nationals, defined as non-citizens without the right to free movement in the EU.

Through a budget of 15.4 billion euros, the ENP supports economic and social reforms for neighbouring countries of the EU including Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine. 

Since 2014, the ENP has funnelled more than 200 million eurosto help Ukraine’s path to EU integration. Ukraine has received over 17 billion euros in grants and loans, inclusive of financial supports for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fortress Europe

With central and eastern European member states joining the EU in 2004, 2007 and 2013, eastern Europe has became the bordering outskirts of the EU. And so recent refugee flows have to be managed in the peripheral east, now tasked with militarizing their borders and keeping refugees out.

In contrast to the warm welcome granted to Ukrainian refugees, Poland has recently let Iraqi and Afghani refugees freeze to deathat its eastern border. It was the EU that tripled the border management funds to Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to reduce access to asylum, and increase border push-backs and detentions. 

Citizenship or race?

The mistreatment of foreign nationals fleeing Ukraine has been attributed to race.

“Black people” and “African students” are terms interchangeably used to describe those being held back at borders or being prevented from boarding evacuation buses. 

Ukraine has continued the former Soviet tradition of regularly recruiting Global South students within the medical field. India, Morocco, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, China, Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Uzbekistan are the top 10 countries of origin for international students in Ukraine. 

Much of eastern Europe is made out of racially homogeneous countries, where non-citizens are often visibly non-white. Using a racial lens to understand how borders respond to the attempts of international students to cross them diverts attention from citizenship regimes in allocating rights. 

It also minimizes the larger problem at hand — the precarious status of temporary residents, including international students, who inhabit a marginal position by bureaucratic design.

Citizenship becomes the primary basis of exclusion. It is a related phenomenon that citizenship gets descriptively associated with race.

We do not intend to legitimize the racist and discriminatory coverage that has surfaced in relation to the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

Race does matter in refugee favouritism. But the opening of refugee corridors to Ukraine’s neighbours has little to do with race and more to do with geopolitical and citizenship regimes that determine freedom of movement within Europe.

Source: Ukraine: How citizenship and race play out in refugees’ movements in Europe

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism, Racism, Refugees Tagged with ,

Inside Poland’s Drastic Immigration Reversal

2022/03/10 Leave a comment

Sharp contrast but understandable:

For the largely Middle Eastern migrants arriving in Poland during the fall 2021 border crisis with Belarus, the reception was chilly – in more ways than one. After trudging through freezing temperatures, many were met at the Polish border by armed soldiers who pushed them back, at times violently.

Following the crisis, in which Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko enticed thousands of Middle Eastern asylum seekers into his country and then funneled them west, the Polish government started construction of a fence spanning 115 miles along the Polish-Belarusian border.

The moves to strengthen the border were largely supported by the Polish public, which has generally opposed resettling Middle Eastern refugees in the country. In 2015, during the Syrian refugee crisis, thousands of Poles marched through Warsaw’s streets, chanting, “Today refugees, tomorrow terrorists!” In 2016, 73% of the Polish population said they viewed refugees from places like Iraq and Syria as a “threat to their country.”

Now, during the second full week of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, Polish rhetoric surrounding refugees has taken a dramatic turn.

“We will do everything to provide safe shelter in Poland for everyone who needs it,” Poland’s interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, said to journalists at the beginning of the crisis.

Poles have similarly lent their voices and even homes to support the roughly 1.2  million Ukrainians who have poured into their country. They have distributed food, raised funds, and organized medical convoys to give aid to their besieged neighbor and its residents.

In fact, relative to other EU member states – namely Italy, Germany, and Finland, France, Romania, and Sweden – Poland citizens indicated the greatest willingness to host Ukrainian refugees, according to a poll taken by the European Council on Foreign Relations in late January.

Why the radical shift? Experts attribute Poland’s initial embrace of Ukrainian refugees to the pre-existing Ukrainian population in the country, as well as to historical and cultural ties. In other words: proximity and similarity.

Despite the recent virulence aimed at Middle Eastern refugees, experts say anti-immigration attitudes aren’t long-standing in Polish society and have roots in the Syrian refugee crisis that shook the European Union just seven years ago.

“If you look at the 1990s and early 2000s, migration was not a politicized topic… At that stage, Poles were getting more and more open toward other nations,” says Marta Kindler, a sociologist and research fellow at the University of Warsaw’s Center of Migration Research.

Then came the 2015 migration crisis and the election the same year of Poland’s current right-wing, populist Law and Justice Party, whose platform stoked the flames of nationalism and xenophobia with alarmist tales of “severe diseases” from non-European migrants.

Following the party’s significant victory, Kindler says that “hostile attitudes, especially toward Muslim migrants” were allowed to openly proliferate among Poles, resulting years later, during the Belarusian conflict, in what she believes to be “racism at the border.”

The current migrant crisis, of course, is sending thousands of mostly white, mostly Christian refugees to the border. And while several factors are likely contributing to the warm embrace Poles are giving to Ukrainian refugees, race is likely one of them, Kindler says.

“It is clear that this is unfortunately on a racist and ethnic basis,” she says. “This is an issue that I think is right now really striking.”

Poles are fairly accustomed to seeing Ukrainians inside their borders, and experts say that familiarity as well as the cultural similarities shared by the countries may be the driving forces behind the altruism exhibited by Poles this time around.

Though Poland remains a fairly homogenous society, Ukrainians make up the largest group of foreigners in the country, at 57%. The Polish government says 300,000 Ukrainians currently hold residence permits in the country. However many more are likely in Poland through the visa-free agreement between the two countries. The New York Times put the total number of Ukrainian citizens in the country before the Russian invasion at around 1 million.

Many came for economic opportunities following the fall of the Iron Curtain. At the time, Poland in particular had developed a reputation as a country with ample economic opportunities and higher wages relative to some of its neighbors.

“[During the 1990s] the situation in Ukraine was very poor,” Kindler says. “It was not so much that people were unemployed in Ukraine, but that they earned so little that they were not able to support their households.”

Ukrainians once again set out for Poland in large numbers in 2014 and 2014 as a result of their country’s economic and security situation. The two countries also have some linguistic overlap. As of 2020, at least a third of Ukrainians had at least a basic command of the Polish language, according to a survey.

Another factor likely influencing how Poland is reacting to Ukrainian refugees is the shared concern both countries have about Russian expansion.

“There’s also the geographical proximity to the current events in Ukraine, which makes people also feel personally threatened,” says Hanne Beirens, a director at the Migration Policy Institute Europe. “There’s explosions only 70 kilometers away from the Polish border. I think that’s also feeding into how people are responding.”

For many Poles, the specter of Soviet oppression still takes a toll on the collective psyche.

“There’s also a historical dimension that weighs in into this, which is the memory of suffered repressions of Polish citizens [in the days of the Soviet Union]. So that’s very much still alive in the collective memory in Poland,” Beirens says. “Hence, there’s this kind of sympathy or empathy with what Ukrainians are experiencing at this very moment in time.”

But as the crisis continues to unfold and the numbers swell, many wonder whether the goodwill will persist.

Despite the current rapport between the countries, the relationship between them has historically been fraught. Tensions were briefly reignited in 2016 following a decision by Poland to label the killings of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II as a “genocide.” During 2016 and 2017, violence against Ukrainians escalated, with more than 44,000 cases of hate crimes against Ukrainians in a single Polish region.

“I’m just hoping for society in general, this solidarity that is being shown right now will not be temporary, and that it will not fade away,” Kindler says.

Source: Inside Poland’s Drastic Immigration Reversal

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Barutciski: Roxham Road — Canadians deserve honest talk about this country’s asylum policy

2022/03/09 Leave a comment

Needed on both sides of the spectrum:

Despite international travel restrictions, the number of asylum seekers entering Canada through the unofficial Roxham Road border crossing between Quebec and upstate New York has reached winter-month record levels. Recent statistics indicate 2,367 migrants entered during a month of January that was particularly cold. Almost 3,000 entered in December. At this rate, the RCMP will intercept a record number of asylum seekers on the land border this year.

We have not heard about these irregular migrants in recent years for a simple reason: after insisting during the first three years of the Trump administration that it was impossible to block the border, the Trudeau government simply invoked public health safety and prevented them from entering at the start of the pandemic. The special Order in Council preventing entry at Roxham Road was lifted last November and, unsurprisingly, the number of asylum claims immediately shot up.

We are back to the controversial double standard that created controversy and contributed to record levels of asylum claims from 2017 to 2019. If migrants arrive at the Lacolle port of entry, border officials invoke the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States to prevent them from entering to claim asylum. However, if the migrants go a couple of kilometres to the west at Roxham Road, the RCMP allows them to enter because of a loophole in the agreement. There is, however, no protection principle that could justify treating asylum seekers differently based on which part of the land border they use to enter.

Instead of explaining the problem in a transparent way so that pro-immigration Canadians could grasp the dilemma, the Trudeau government focused on signalling a supposedly virtuous policy and promoting a humanitarian brand. Observers who sympathized with this apparent openness are missing the underlying political cynicism. Canadian asylum policy has always been anchored to the basic concept of interdiction with strict visa issuance policies and airline sanctions for undocumented travellers. Despite the rhetoric, governments of all stripes have done everything possible to prevent asylum seekers from reaching our shores. It is not by chance that many migrants from poor countries obtained U.S. visas to fly to New York City before taking the bus/taxi to Roxham Road. They would never have received Canadian visas. Seen in this light, the recent decision to grant visas quickly to Ukrainians will eventually be seen as another double standard.

The ideological battle regarding Roxham Road is therefore misleading to the extent it has become a symbol dividing Canadians into supposedly pro-refugee or anti-refugee camps. Part of this context is that activists have opposed any idea of an agreement with the U.S. since the late 1980s (when enabling legislation was initially proposed) because they do not believe U.S. standards are good enough.

Despite its branding efforts, a closer look reveals the Trudeau government has always argued before the courts that migrants can be returned to the U.S. because it is a “safe third country” where rights are respected (under both the Trump and Biden administrations). So far it has not said this too loudly outside the courtroom because it clashes with a pro-refugee image.

Similarly, the Trudeau government does not explain what is meant by the commitment “to modernize” the agreement with the U.S. that is included in the immigration minister’s mandate letter. This would logically mean removing the loophole, but clearly saying so goes against brand.

Although unfashionable on campuses, there is nothing wrong with communicating to the public that border control is a legitimate state function. It explains why the federal government has always preferred to select and resettle refugees from overseas rather than deal with asylum claimants who arrive irregularly and undocumented. An honest discussion acknowledges potential problems with such uninvited asylum claims. The challenge is reconciling the need to control borders with a humane and fair approach to asylum.

Canada is not the only country facing asylum dilemmas. Even prior to the Ukrainian outflow, the number of asylum seekers increased over the last few months in the European Union. Likewise, the problem at the Mexican border is getting worse despite a new administration in Washington that does not want to appear anti-refugee. In a post-pandemic context that will see increased international mobility, Canadians have an interest in rejecting superficial image-based approaches to asylum policy. The government could improve public trust by eliminating the incoherence in the way asylum claims are handled at Roxham Road and being more upfront about our actual position. It is time our leaders’ role in elevating the public discourse overrides the fondness for political marketing.

Michael Barutciski is a faculty member of York University’s Glendon College and associate editor of Global Brief magazine. He has taught refugee law and directed public policy programs in several countries.

Source: Barutciski: Roxham Road — Canadians deserve honest talk about this country’s asylum policy

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

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