In Niagara Falls, Roxham Road asylum seekers find less space and more strife as tourist season nears

2023/03/06 Leave a comment

Not all that surprising:

It had been a long time since Marie Saintil had last been to church, when she found herself at the pulpit of the Faith Tabernacle in Welland, Ont., on a recent Sunday evening.

“Est-ce que tout le monde parle Créole?” she asked the small Haitian congregation, a half dozen or so of whom had been shuttled to the service in their Sunday best from the various hotels in nearby Niagara Falls where they are living. The congregation nods in unison – yes, they all speak Créole.

Ms. Saintil, a lawyer of Haitian background herself, was there that evening to deliver not a sermon, but a primer on the refugee claims process.

When she took a job with the Niagara Community Legal Clinic in January, she was looking for a change of pace after two decades of practising immigration law in Toronto. Instead, she has found herself in the throes of a migration crisis, with thousands of asylum seekers unexpectedly placed in a tourist town that is not equipped to absorb them, transferred by the federal government from Quebec after crossing at Roxham Road.

More than 2,841 asylum seekers have been transferred to Niagara Falls by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada since last June, spread across more than 1,400 hotel rooms in the city after being shuttled on from their arrival in Quebec.

Another 702 have been placed in Ottawa, 618 in Windsor, and 1,396 in Cornwall, according to the IRCC. They began transfers to Atlantic provinces at the end of last month, with 63 so far transferred to Halifax and 30 people transferred to Fredericton.

But nine months in – as understaffed settlement and social services scramble to support the newcomers, and with as many as one in 12 hotel rooms occupied as the city’s tourism season looms – tensions are starting to build.

“These people are taken from Roxham Road in Quebec, and they’re put into a bus, and they’re dumped. And the word is dumped – they’re dumped here,” Ms. Saintil said.

“And now they’re being told, you’re not really wanted because we have tourists coming … It was fine to have them here during the slow season, in the wintertime, but now that the tourists are coming, you’re not wanted.”

Ms. Saintil cannot represent them, she told the congregants at the church, as she handed out information packets and business cards. This has not been her clinic’s mandate, but she feels compelled to help given how few lawyers in the area do this work.

The migrants did not choose Niagara Falls. They ended up here after being repeatedly shuffled along by American and then Canadian authorities – perpetually treated as someone else’s problem. Regardless of where their journeys began, these migrants have often crossed several borders before arriving in Canadain an effort to flee violence, persecution and poverty – and have faced hostility along the way.

At the Mexico-U.S. border, thousands of people are crossing each day. And once in the United States, they have faced increasing hostility, including from political leaders in southern states such as Texas and Florida, whose Republican governors have transported thousands of asylum seekers to places such as New York, Washington and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

In New York, Democratic politicians have responded to an influx of migrants by offering one-way tickets to Plattsburgh, N.Y., a short distance from the Canadian border at Roxham Road.

Under the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the U.S., asylum seekers must file their claims in whichever country they arrive in first, which means they will be turned back if they attempt to get into Canada at official border crossings. Because that agreement covers only official border points, crossings at the unofficial Roxham Road entry have risen sharply.

Now in Canada, the migrants are finding themselves unwelcome in Quebec, too. With the numbers at Roxham Road continuing to rise – close to 40,000 migrants entered Canada there last year – Quebec’s Premier François Legault has protested the “strain” the influx has put on his province’s social services and urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shut it down, or send them elsewhere.

“Everybody is sending the ball to somebody else,” Ms. Saintil said. “It’s a blame game.”

With a population of 95,000 people, Niagara Falls depends heavily on tourism and is known as much for the massive falls that straddle an international border as it is for the garishness of its main drag, lined with haunted houses and wax museums. The city has upwards of 16,000 hotel rooms, Mayor Jim Diodati said, and at first the IRCC contracts seemed like welcome news for hotels that have been struggling after three years in a pandemic.

“We’ve got lots of rooms, we’ll do our part and help out as much as we can – that’s kind of the attitude as it started,” he said. But as the numbers began to grow, he said the mood has shifted. “They went from 87 to 300, to 687, to 1,500 … And then we were told 1,700 and 2,000 were the next steps,” he said. “And, you know, we weren’t really sure how much we can handle, and at what point it would become disruptive, because we’ve never been through anything like this before.”

After a video call with Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, and his staff last month, the mayor said he still doesn’t know how long the hotel rooms are booked for. He said he’s concerned about the impact on the coming tourism season, which he describes as the “the goose that lays the golden eggs here.”

“A tourist is going to spend money in restaurants, the attractions, the casinos, the wineries … whereas these folks are just staying in the rooms,” he said. “A lot of people are counting on it to feed their families and pay their mortgages and pay their rents. So we’re asking, ‘What’s the plan?’ ”

IRCC spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald wouldn’t provide a timeline on how long the hotel rooms have been leased, citing confidentiality. In an e-mail, he said the department takes into account availability, cost, transportation and access to support services.

Mr. Diodati said he was told numbers were likely to peak in the coming weeks, as they began to transfer people to other areas, including the Atlantic provinces. But in the meantime, he warns the mood of the town has begun to shift. “Most conversations that people have with me start off with ‘I don’t want to be insensitive, and I’m not complaining … but where are we going with this?’ ” he said. “And we’re trying to get answers.” The mayor said he has asked the federal government for more money to help the city and local organizations keep up with demand. IRCC said in a statement that it was working with the local government to ensure they are prepared and to respond any concerns.

On a Friday evening almost one week after the mayor’s meeting with the immigration minister, the lobby of the Ramada hotel on Lundy’s Lane was crammed with 100 or so people lined up for dinner.

This type of scene, Ms. Saintil believes, is the real unspoken concern. “It just doesn’t look good to see all these refugee claimants in the hotels. That’s what it is,” she said. “It doesn’t look good in pictures with American tourists.”

On a frigid Sunday afternoon, Henry Carmona and a group of fellow Venezuelan migrants headed down from their hotel to take in the icy view of the falls.

The economic collapse and rise of political violence in Venezuela have led to one of the largest displacement crises in the world. It is a mass exodus that has sent a quarter of the country’s population – more than seven million people – fleeing to neighbouring Colombia and then onward.

It took these men years to get here. They each show off photos of the families they had to leave behind because of the dangerous nature of their journeys.

Truck drivers by trade, the men are eager to get their work permits, learn English and begin to find work. But they landed in Niagara only a few days earlier, bused in from Quebec after their arrival at Roxham Road.

They have appreciated their treatment in Canada so far, they said. They laughed as they took in the various gimmicky attractions on Clifton Hill. Next door to the Museum of the Stars, a stiff-moving dinosaur head called out to them from the Looney Tunes-esque Bone Blaster Shootin’ Gallery.

And though they’d expected to be in Quebec, they are content in Niagara for now; whenever their work permits are ready, they plan to go where the work is. Other asylum seekers who spoke with The Globe and Mail, some from Colombia and others from Haiti, said the same.

At the YMCA of Niagara, Deanna D’Elia, manager of employment and immigrant services, has scrambled to move some part-time workers to full-time in an effort to address the spiralling need.

Of their 65-member team, 25 or so are focused specifically on settlement. Others work on helping them find employment, though a major part of that process depends on work permits – which, given the backlog, can take many months or even years to be issued.

“Individuals and families have come to Canada to seek a better life and they are eager to work,” Ms. D’Elia said. In the meantime, many must rely on social assistance, which in today’s rental market can barely cover a room in the city. It’s a situation that she says has “amplified” discussions about the housing crisis, both regionally and across the province and country.

It’s a pressure that is being felt in social services across the region, which were under pressure even before the asylum seekers arrived.

On a recent Friday morning, Pam Sharp and her team at Project SHARE were preparing for a busy day at the largest food bank in Niagara Falls. They’d had to close the day before for an ice storm, and knew it was likely to be busier as a result.

Demand in the community was already very high. In addition to the food bank, they also provide homelessness prevention supports and other services, and served the equivalent of one in 10 residents last year, she said.

They see, on average, 100 families a day, and the infusion of 3,000 new vulnerable people is stretching them to their limits. Both the regional and city council have declared a state of emergency on homelessness, mental health and opioid addiction.

Ms. Sharp has noticed more and more asylum seekers coming in – for example, of the 157 families they served one day this week, 60 identified as asylum seekers –and the team has on occasion done outreach at the hotels directly.

“We want to make sure that anyone coming into our city is able to meet their basic needs,” she says.

Janet Medume, executive director of the Welland Heritage Council and Multicultural Centre, which is leading the local settlement efforts. said they weren’t told in advance about the asylum seekers’ arrivals but began to hear word through community networks last summer. Since then, more than 20 community organizations have banded together to develop a strategy, but she said they need both funding and staffing boosts from all levels of government to keep up.

“Let’s inject more resources so we can focus on ensuring individuals get the help they need, and hopefully get employment quick enough, so we can get them out of there as soon as possible,” she said. “Give us those resources and we’ll be okay.”

At the church Sunday evening, Ms. Saintil lingered after the service, passing out information pamphlets and business cards. She wore a sad smile as she watched a trio of siblings – ages 8, 7 and 1 – playing in the foyer. The older two, sisters, showed off cartwheels and boasted about their favourite school subjects.

She urged their father to get them scarves for the cold weather, and he nodded enthusiastically. They’ve been here eight months in a hotel, Ms. Saintil said, after they waved goodbye. The parents were only recently able to meet with a lawyer for the first time.

“Everybody’s doing their best,” she said. “But if they’re hoping this is not going to be a crisis in a month or two, they have to start acting now.”

Source: In Niagara Falls, Roxham Road asylum seekers find less space and more strife as tourist season nears

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Macklin: What happens when Roxham Road is closed

2023/03/01 Leave a comment

Useful commentary as always on some of the likely impacts. However, I am not convinced that all of the asylum seekers at Roxham Road would pursue more risky routes as their risk/benefit calculation would likely lead some not to pursue a more hazardous route.

No way of testing this hypothesis but arguably, many of the Roxham Road asylum seekers are in less desperate situations than those South of the USA border or crossing the Mediterranean.:

The other risk is of course to public support for immigration over this perceived loophole and the perception the government is not managing the border and immigration more generally:

Quebec Premier François Legault, supported by federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, urged the federal government to shut down Roxham Road. This is the spot where, over the past six years, thousands of refugee claimants crossed into Canada and asked for refugee protection. 

The numbers who enter may seem high to some Canadians, but relative to the number of asylum seekers seeking protection in other countries, it is a trickle. It is also a fraction of those we have welcomed from Ukraine in the past year. No one can validly claim to know in advance whether the people who cross at Roxham Road meet the refugee definition, so attempts to distinguish them from Ukrainians on that basis is disingenuous.

The premier of Quebec complains about the alleged unfairness of Quebec bearing costs associated with asylum seekers who enter at Roxham Road. Canada allocates a proportion of federal funding to Quebec for newcomer settlement that is not indexed to the actual number of newcomers that Quebec admits. Quebec receives proportionately more money than other provinces to settle newcomers and does not account for how it spends it. Legault’s claim that Quebec lacks money and capacity to manage Roxham Road arrivals deserves little sympathy. 

Up until 2004, asylum seekers travelling overland would have entered in a safe, orderly way by presenting themselves at an official port of entry at the Canada-U.S. border. Then, the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement turned ports of entry into brick walls for asylum seekers. 

Canada did this by exploiting a loophole in the Refugee Convention, which prohibits states from sending refugees back to countries of origin, but is silent about deflecting them to third countries (in this case, the U.S.). Fast forward a few years, and we discover that some asylum seekers are crossing into Canada at Roxham Road. It is not unlawful for a refugee to enter a country “irregularly” under the Refugee Convention or Canadian immigration law. Refugee law recognizes that desperate people will take desperate measures. 

Roxham Road is an open secret. No one needs a smuggler to find out about it, or to find it. If Roxham Road is blocked, will people become less desperate? Not likely. But they will be forced to take more dangerous and clandestine measures to avoid detection and apprehension. So here are the government programs that politicians are really proposing when they advocate making it legally impossible for asylum seekers to enter Canada:

Job Creation Program for Smugglers: Once prohibited from presenting themselves to Canadian authorities in a safe and orderly way at a port of entry, asylum seekers will increasingly rely on smugglers to guide them into Canada surreptitiously. The smuggling business will grow in response to this government-created demand and become increasingly lucrative, as well as violent and lethal. 

People will pay, and if they don’t have the money, they will borrow it and become indebted to traffickers, who will exploit them. Smuggling will proliferate. We will hear more stories about more people who suffer debilitating injury or freeze to death trying to cross the border from U.S. into Canada or vice versa. Smugglers will be blamed for facilitating border crossing, and for the injuries and deaths that ensue. Wait for it.

Stimulus Package for Military and Security Contractors: Pundits and politicians will demand that Canada invest in surveillance, military and physical infrastructure along a 9,000 km Canada-U.S. border in order to halt the “invasion” of people seeking refugee protection. 

They will describe this as a “humanitarian” program to protect hapless asylum seekers from predation by ruthless smugglers and traffickers. Military and security contractors will line up to proffer their high-tech gadgets and high-priced solutions. Turning a 9,000 km border into a high-tech wall is an expensive, cruel and futile fantasy. The border will be a perpetual crisis zone, where no walls are high enough, no tactics are effective enough, and no amount of money spent is ever enough. Wait for it.

These are the lessons from Fortress Europe and from Australia’s Pacific Solution. Rumours already abound that the Liberals are pressing the United States to somehow “extend” the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement along the full length of the Canadian border. President Biden is proposing a similar rule at its southern border. Wait for it.

Source: Macklin: What happens when Roxham Road is closed

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

U.S. delivers reality check: New border deal with Canada not top priority

2023/02/27 Leave a comment

More coverage, deeper than most:

The premier of Quebec wants a new migration deal with the U.S. He wants it urgently. He wants the prime minister of Canada to negotiate it. The prime minister? He wants it too.

It’s become a pressing political priority and major federal-provincial irritant, with Canada eager to slow the flow of migrants entering on foot from the U.S. at unofficial points of entry, such as the contentious one at Roxham Road, south of Montreal.

There’s one small problem. The Americans get a say here.

For years, the U.S. has been conspicuously tight-lipped on the topic, and this week offered new — and rare — public insight into the American perspective.

Newsflash: A country dealing with millions of migrants per year is not in a major rush to reclaim Canada’s thousands.

U.S. Ambassador David Cohen told CBC News irregular crossings into Quebec are a symptom of a broad global migration challenge; and he’d rather address problems, not symptoms.

He wouldn’t even acknowledge the countries are talking about Canada’s desire to extend the 2002 Safe Third County Agreement to make it easier to expel migrants who cross between regular checkpoints.

Conversations with officials in both countries make clear no agreement is imminent. Whether President Joe Biden’s trip to Canada next month changes anything is an open question.

Two sources say that, to date, there have been constructive talks with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but the issue is far from settled.

Here’s an assessment in blunter language from an immigration expert in Washington, who also happens to know Canada very well.

“There is zero incentive for the United States to reopen Safe Third Country right now. Zero,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior adviser on immigration at Washington’s Bipartisan Policy Centre, who once led Homeland Security operations at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

‘Our house is burning right now’

In its current form, the Safe Third Country Agreement says asylum seekers who enter the U.S. or Canada must make their claims in the first country they arrive in, but it only covers official points of entry.

Canada wants the agreement extended across the entire frontier, so it applies to migrants who use irregular entry points like the now-famous Roxham Road.

To Canadians wondering why it’s taken years for the U.S. to prioritize these negotiations, Brown said: “Because our house is burning right now on the other border.… Sorry.”

Just look at two parallel events that unfolded this week, in Canada and the U.S. They might as well have been happening in parallel universes.

Quebec Premier François Legault got lots of attention back home for a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and an op-ed in the Globe and Mail.

He said Quebec received 39,000 irregular crossers last year, and could not handle more, saying it was straining housing, hospital services, and language training.

He requested money from Ottawa, said all future migrants should be sent to other provinces, and he demanded a new Safe Third Country deal with the U.S.

While the northern neighbour was asking the U.S. to accept more migrants, the Biden administration released plans to accept fewer, with a draft executive order.

The proposed rule would make it easier to instantly deport asylum claimants who try entering the U.S. without first scheduling an appointment in a mobile app, and first requesting asylum in Mexico.

That hardening attitude would come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to developments in the U.S.

Amid a historic worldwide surge in human displacement, migration has become perhaps the most explosive issue in American politics.

U.S. border agents could encounter more than three million migrants this year, higher even than the record-smashing total in 2022.

It’s causing strain in border communities like Yuma, Ariz., where agents met 300,000 migrants last year — that’s triple the local population.

Arizona official on northern complaints: ‘A joke to me’

The head of a regional hospital in Yuma said his staff have been caring for migrants and it’s cost the organization $20 million.

He said he laughs when he hears northern states complain about migration: Denver and New York, for example, have expressed a welcoming attitude then later declared they were overwhelmed.

“It’s pretty funny,”  said Dr. Bob Trenschel.

“They all seem to have a conniption when they get two buses of migrants.… The mayor of New York is squawking when he gets two busloads? That’s a joke to me.”

Now the mayor of New York is, in fact, paying for buses to carry migrants upstate, including to northern border communities where they enter Canada on foot.

After Canada averaged about 10,000 refugee claims per year since 2017, this northward surge has added tens of thousands of new border-crossers.

For comparison’s sake, the U.S. could expect more asylum claimants from Russia alone; if the recent rate holds, more than 60,000 Russians could seek asylum in the U.S. this year.

Other countries have even bigger challenges. Take Colombia: it’s currently home to nearly 10 per cent of the population of Venezuela, more than 2 million people who’ve fled.

An asylum-policy analyst in Washington said Canada’s migration issues don’t come up often in the policy conversation there.

“It’s certainly not something that is frequently raised,” said Susan Fratzke, a former State Department official and now senior analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

“When it does come up, it’s always in reference to knowing that it’s a Canadian priority.”

She said it’s possible there could be a deal, probably as part of a broader migration agreement and probably not soon.

Watching Biden visit for development

One American analyst of Canada-U.S. relations is more optimistic.

He said Biden has a demonstrated desire to maintain good relations with Canada, as evidenced by his resolving irritants around electric-vehicle incentives and the Nexus trusted-traveller program.

For that reason, said Chris Sands, he wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some sort of development next month when Biden visits Canada.

“It would be a wonderful announceable at an event like that,” said Sands, director of the Canada Institute at Washington’s WIlson Center. “This is eminently doable if there’s will on both sides.”

On Thursday, Trudeau said he has spoken directly to Biden about this and suggested it will be on the agenda of Biden’s upcoming Canadian visit.

One person familiar with the binational discussions said there’s a shared desire to get a deal, but working out the details is more complicated.

Sands concurred.

He said goodwill isn’t the issue. The problem, he said, is working through budgeting and logistics, like sorting out who handles what responsibilities among the handful of law-enforcement and border agencies in both countries.

Potential deal: Something bigger

So what would it take to get a deal?

To get Americans’ interest, Brown said Canada would probably have to offer something unrelated, or related tangentially.

Maybe something like a major Canadian stabilization role in Haiti, she said, or a clampdown on the flow of Mexicans through Canada into Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, which U.S. officials say is an emerging trend.

She suggested one surprising way the premier of Quebec might get Washington’s attention: accept more U.S. dairy imports, adding, “I’m only partially joking.”

The U.S. ambassador was clear in the CBC interview: his objective is a broader plan for international migration.

Canada has, in fact, signed a hemispheric agreement where it promised to take a lead role on some initiatives, one being resettling more French-speaking migrants, especially from Haiti.

Connecting the dots, Fratzke said any agreement on this issue will probably be bigger, not just a one-issue deal on Safe Third Country.

Two suggestions she offered: Canada could help build the capacity of other countries’ asylum systems, and could expand legal opportunities for economic migration.

The latter is what Brown wants for the U.S. too.

She said any solution must include opportunities for people to apply legally, so that they have hope the official pathways might work, for both humanitarian and economic visas.

The U.S., for example, is resettling only a few hundred refugees per year lately from Latin America: “That’s crazy,” Brown said.

And for all the millions of migrants it’s received, the percentage of people on U.S. soil born abroad is not actually that high, about average among industrialized countries.

She said the other part of a solution is more orderly enforcement. The asylum backlog is massive, and it takes an average of over four years to decide cases.

Brown said applications should be processed swiftly, decided near the border.

In the meantime, she said, when richer northern countries, like Canada, and the U.S., talk about restricting migration, they’re essentially pushing the burden south, to poorer countries, to places like Colombia, Central America and Mexico.

“That’s what we’re talking about,” she said.

Source: U.S. delivers reality check: New border deal with Canada not top priority

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Lanctôt: Préparer l’avenir [future waves of climate refugees]

2023/02/25 Leave a comment

Reminder that today’s problems may be insignificant compared to the futuree:

Puisqu’il faut battre le fer pendant qu’il est chaud et qu’on fait tout pour qu’il le demeure, nous y voilà encore. La panique entourant le chemin Roxham semble s’être installée pour de bon, dans les termes déplorables qu’on connaît. Si au moins il s’agissait de braquer les projecteurs sur le drame humain qui se joue dans l’espace liminal des frontières, ce serait une chose. Or, c’est sur le « fardeau » de l’accueil qu’on se focalise, pendant que les demandeurs d’asile eux-mêmes flottent en périphérie de la discussion, comme une simple variable dans un calcul qui se fait sur leur dos, mais sans eux.

C’est ainsi que, cette semaine, le premier ministre François Legault s’est adressé directement à son homologue fédéral, Justin Trudeau, pour exiger qu’Ottawa agisse pour soulager le Québec de la pression exercée par les demandeurs d’asile sur sa société. La lettre est remarquable en ce qu’elle condense, en quelques paragraphes, plusieurs années d’une construction méticuleuse de la version toute québécoise du discours sur le péril migratoire aux frontières.

Les États-Unis, l’Europe aussi, ont une longueur d’avance à ce chapitre, alors que ces discours se construisent, se reconfigurent et se peaufinent depuis bien plus longtemps. Mais alors que la migration d’urgence s’intensifie partout dans le monde, le Québec fait face soudain, lui aussi, à une détresse qu’il lui était autrefois plus facile d’ignorer. Sans surprise, on réagit en important les dispositifs idéologiques qui, partout ailleurs, président au durcissement des frontières et à la construction de la figure du migrant comme menace.

François Legault l’a bien compris, et sa lettre à Justin Trudeau est une formidable radiographie de la panique migratoire telle qu’elle se vit chez nous. Le premier ministre québécois campe d’abord ses revendications sur le terrain de la défense des services publics, soulignant que l’arrivée « massive » de demandeurs d’asile au Québec pèse bien lourd sur des institutions déjà à bout de souffle.

Il ne se trouvera personne pour le contredire : les services publics, tout comme les groupes communautaires — à qui l’on demande d’éponger le trop-plein du réseau public avec une fraction des ressources —, sont poussés à bout de manière structurelle. La crise est chronique, et elle a été délibérément fabriquée par des décennies de gouvernance néolibérale.

Il est vrai que les ressources manquent pour accompagner les demandeurs d’asile de manière digne. Les histoires que l’on entend brisent le coeur ; des familles qui passent d’un refuge à l’autre, des gens contraints de dormir dans la rue après avoir traversé la frontière par Roxham, une attente interminable pour obtenir de l’aide financière, et le dépassement bien réel des organismes qui prodiguent de l’aide immédiate. Tout cela est insupportable, sauf qu’on pose le problème à l’envers : notre échec à accueillir correctement ces personnes est le symptôme de carences préexistantes, et non leur cause. On pointe la lune et on regarde le doigt.

Il faudrait plutôt renverser la question : comment se fait-il que le Québec n’ait rien de mieux à offrir que l’itinérance et des dédales administratifs déshumanisants à des personnes qui ne demanderaient pas mieux que de pouvoir contribuer à la société québécoise ?

François Legault brandit le chiffre de 39 000 migrants arrivés de manière irrégulière en 2022, ajoutant que cela s’ajoute aux 20 000 personnes admises par voie régulière. Il veut souligner, on l’imagine, l’ampleur de la contribution du Québec. Or, comme le remarquait la directrice générale d’Amnistie internationale Canada francophone, France-Isabelle Langlois, dans une lettre parue dans ces pages, on compte actuellement 100 millions de personnes déplacées de force à travers le monde. À travers les Amériques, la Colombie accueille à elle seule 1,8 million de personnes. On estime par ailleurs que d’ici 2050, plus de 200 millions de personnes seront déplacées par la crise climatique à l’échelle mondiale.

Qu’à cela ne tienne, le Québec, lui, a déjà statué quant à sa responsabilité dans la prise en charge des mouvements de population mondiaux : « La capacité d’accueil du Québec est désormais largement dépassée », écrit le premier ministre. François Legault le dit sans détour : il ne veut pas améliorer la capacité d’accueil du Québec. Il ne demande pas à Ottawa plus de ressources pour mieux accueillir. Il affirme au contraire que le Québec en a déjà fait assez, et qu’il espère même être dédommagé pour les efforts déjà déployés.

Il fait ensuite un pas de côté pour mentionner le déclin du français à Montréal, qu’il associe, d’ailleurs, à l’arrivée de tous les migrants, pas seulement les demandeurs d’asile — après tout, il a une base à exciter. Puis, il réclame l’élargissement de l’entente sur les tiers pays sûrs à tous les points d’entrée au Canada, et la fermeture complète du chemin Roxham. Comme si l’interdiction de demander l’asile au Canada par voie terrestre, ainsi que la fermeture d’un seul point d’entrée devenu emblématique n’allaient pas tout simplement pousser plus de gens sur des routes clandestines.

Au-delà de ce que cette lettre dit de la situation présente, on y lit aussi l’ébauche, plus troublante, d’une vision à plus long terme. François Legault prépare le terrain, il entame doucement la normalisation du mot d’ordre qui sera celui de l’avenir cauchemardesque de la crise climatique : laissez-les se débrouiller.

Source: Préparer l’avenir

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , ,

Clark: Let’s get politicians to tell us how they would close Roxham Road, not why, Yakabuski: Trudeau can no longer avoid tough choices on Roxham Road 

2023/02/24 Leave a comment

As always, the herd instinct at play in coverage of irregular arrivals and Roxham Road, given Premier Legault’s public pressure and Pierre Poilievre’s simplistic solution.

Two of the best are Clark, who calls for a needed but unlikely change, and Yakabuski who argues time for though choices:

Let’s hold all our politicians to one simple rule about Roxham Road: Don’t tell us what you want to do about it. Tell us how you would do it.

Quebec politicians have been calling for the unofficial crossing on the border between Quebec and New York state to be closed. And Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has called for the feds to do so within 30 days.

But as it turns out, there is no switch that opens and closes the border. So what is it they are actually proposing?

Mr. Poilievre said that all it takes is a simple decision, but he couldn’t say what the government should decide to do.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons why the government should do something. People want the border to be under control. They want migration to be safe and orderly.

And there is palpable frustration when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau essentially says he’s got nothing other than time to wait for U.S. President Joe Biden to solve the problem by changing a border agreement. And that’s essentially what Mr. Trudeau was saying Wednesday when he said that if Roxham Road was closed, asylum-seekers would just cross at other places. It’s probably true, but not a solution.

So how can it be done? Quebec Premier François Legault wants a deal with the U.S., too, but faster. Mr. Poilievre – and most politicians – don’t want to specify. Real proposals usally involve doing things the politicians don’t want to talk about. And many so far have been ineffective or ridiculous.

When People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier was running for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2017, he proposed sending the military. In 2018, two Conservative MPs proposed declaring the entire 8,891-kilometre border into an official border crossing, arguing that would trick the U.S. into taking back those who entered Canada at Roxham Road. That same year, then-Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée briefly suggested a fence, or “a sign, a cedar grove, a police officer, whatever.”

Mr. Poilievre told reporters on Tuesday that it must be easy, because Mr. Trudeau shut down Roxham Road during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But that didn’t happen with a snap of the fingers. When the two countries shut their borders, the U.S. agreed that Canada could direct border-crossers back. When the borders reopened, that arrangement ended. And here we are again.

That’s one thing to remember: Once they step foot into Canada, non-Americans can’t be sent back to the U.S. unless the U.S. agrees. The Safe Third Country Agreement allows for asylum seekers who enter Canada at official border posts to be turned back, but not those who cross in between. Canadian governments have tried for years to get the U.S. to change that, to no avail. On Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau said he’s working on it.

Of course, the simplest way to stop people from crossing at Roxham Road would be to scrap the Safe Third Country Agreement. Then asylum-seekers would just show up at official border crossings, as they did before 2004. And as Mr. Legault pointed out the other day, Mr. Trudeau tweeted in 2017 that Canada welcomes those fleeing persecution and war. It’s just that scrapping the agreement would almost certainly bring a lot more of them.

Some have proposed a fence. But obviously, people can go around it. There are lots of places to cross the border. It might disrupt the organized route to Roxham Road but police would probably have to intercept border-crossers at more places.

And there is Mr. Bernier’s idea: Send in the troops. Or police. But the real question is what they would do. Presumably they wouldn’t shoot everyone. Would all asylum-seekers be thrown in jail indefinitely?

Maybe there are better ideas. It would be nice to hear them. But Canadian politicians who don’t tell us how they would do it are avoiding the talk about costs, or the potential for border breaches to proliferate, or locking people up, or toughening the system.

Those are things debated by American politicians, who argue about harsher rules to discourage asylum-seekers from trying to enter the U.S. Mr. Biden is proposing refusing asylum claims from people who travelled through central America.

But now, Mr. Trudeau has essentially admitted he won’t do anything until Mr. Biden agrees to solve the problem for him.

And those such as Mr. Poilievre who call for Roxham Road to be closed are just mouthing meaningless words until they tell us how.

Source: Let’s get politicians to tell us how they would close Roxham Road, not why

François Legault has got his mojo back, or sort of.

After returning from Ottawa this month with a fraction of the billions of additional health care dollars he had been demanding for his province, the Quebec Premier was ridiculed by opposition parties and political pundits alike for being all bark and no bite.

Thanks to Ottawa’s recent transfer to cities in Ontario of asylum seekers arriving at the unofficial border crossing at Roxham Road in Quebec, Mr. Legault has been able to boast to the home crowd that he’s still got it. That his government’s constant efforts to force Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to do something about the “migrant crisis” facing Quebec is finally getting results. Thanks to his leaked letter to Mr. Trudeau and an op-ed in The Globe and Mail, Mr. Legault can tell Quebeckers that he has finally got the rest of Canada’s attention, if not its respect.

In truth, Ottawa last year began bussing some asylum seekers from Roxham Road to hotels in Cornwall, Niagara Falls, Ottawa and Windsor when it could no longer find rooms in Quebec. Since early 2023, those transfers have been occurring on a systematic basis. Mr. Legault wants Ottawa to continue to transfer migrants to other provinces, arguing correctly that Quebec has “taken on a completely disproportionate share” of asylum seekers entering Canada since Roxham Road was reopened in late 2021.

Mr. Legault also wants Mr. Trudeau to permanently “close the breach” in Canada’s border-security by prohibiting migrants from claiming asylum at Roxham Road, as it had temporarily done for an 18-month period during the pandemic. Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for Roxham’s closing within 30 days, also citing the pandemic-related closing as proof that Ottawa has the authority to act unilaterally to address the loophole in the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement that enabled more than 39,000 migrants to enter this country in 2022 at what has become our most official unofficial border crossing.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser called Mr. Poilievre’s ideas “reckless” and lacking in “depth and understanding.” Amid a global migration crisis, Mr. Fraser added, Canada has a “responsibility to implement real, long-term solutions.”

Real, long-term solutions are not this government’s strong suit. It does excel at posturing, virtue signalling and dithering. But it has offered little evidence that it is taking concrete steps to address the increasing flow of asylum seekers at Roxham Road.

It is easy to understand why a government that prefers to project a compassionate image would be reluctant to act in any manner that might make it look heartless to some. Turning asylum seekers away at Roxham Road, in effect surrendering them to U.S. immigration authorities, would subject the Trudeau government to a backlash from within Liberal ranks.

Yet, it must be pointed out that this government has no problem turning away asylum seekers who arrive at official land border crossings. Are those who arrive at Roxham Road any more worthy of refugee status in Canada than the others?

What we do know is that almost half of “irregular border crossers” who arrived in Canada after 2016 saw their asylum claims rejected by the Immigration and Refugee Board or abandoned or withdrew their applications before a final IRB determination. And that the surge in irregular crossings at Roxham Road has left the IRB with a backlog of more than 74,000 cases that is growing rapidly each month. A refugee system that is meant to provide asylum to those fleeing persecution in their country of origin is being exploited by smugglers who prey on vulnerable people seeking to escape economic hardship in Latin America and Africa.

There are those in Liberal circles who argue that the “fundamental premise” at the heart of the STCA – specifically, the designation of the United States as a “safe” country for refugee claimants – no longer holds true. But as the Federal Court of Appeal found in 2021, it is up to the federal cabinet to undertake continual review to ensure that the United States continues to meet the criteria for safe country designation.

Not once since taking power in 2015 has the Trudeau government sought to cancel this designation – not even during the dark days of Donald Trump’s presidency, when some migrant children were separated from their parents.

The Supreme Court of Canada is expected to rule on the STCA this year. Even if it upholds the legality of the agreement, a new proposal by President Joe Biden to turn away all asylum seekers at the U.S. border who arrive from a third country via Mexico raises new questions about Canada’s continued designation of the U.S. as a safe country.

For Mr. Trudeau, there are no “real, long-term solutions” to the Roxham Road dilemma that do not include making tough, even excruciating, choices.

Source: Trudeau can no longer avoid tough choices on Roxham Road

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Legault pitches English Canada for closure of Roxham Road and transfer of migrants

2023/02/23 Leave a comment

While Premier Legault has a point, he and many commentators in Quebec and the Rest of Canada all too often forget about the annual grant for immigration and integration to Quebec under the 1991 Canada-Quebec accord: funding cannot be reduced no matter how much Quebec decreases the number of immigrants it selects and no matter how great the decrease compared to the Rest of Canada.

The numbers for 2022 illustrated this: $697.03M for 69,000 Permanent Residents, rest of Canada $832.41 M for 366,000 Permanent Residents. Or, about $10,000 per Quebec Permanent Residents compared to about $2,300 for the rest of Canada. This overstates the difference somewhat given what is included in the Accord but not dramatically so.

The Minister’s comments, as quoted, suggests the government has no realistic solution to the underlying problem, which likely is the case, but then some honesty and frankness would be welcome:

After demanding for months that Ottawa stop the flow of migrants into the country, Quebec’s premier is making his pitch to English Canada for the closure of an irregular border crossing popular with asylum seekers — and for their transfer outside his province.

The number of would-be refugees entering Quebec “has exploded,” François Legault wrote in an English-language letter published Tuesday in The Globe and Mail, adding that the province’s social services have been pushed to their limits. The sooner the federal government closes Roxham Road — an irregular border crossing in southern Quebec frequently used by asylum seekers — the better, the premier said.

“This situation even raises several humanitarian considerations, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to receive asylum seekers with dignity,” Legault said.

The letter is similar to the one Legault wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday. But unlike the letter to Trudeau, Legault’s message in the Globe does not include concerns that the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers is putting the French language in Montreal at risk. The premier also doesn’t mention that he’s asked Trudeau for more money to pay for the costs of caring for would-be refugees.

“We have therefore asked the federal government to settle new asylum seekers in other provinces that are capable of supporting them with dignity,” Legault wrote in the Globe. The letter called for Ottawa to transfer to other provinces all new asylum seekers who enter irregularly, “while Quebec catches its breath.” Ottawa should issue work permits and process refugee applications faster, he added.

“In the meantime, Mr. Trudeau’s government should send the message loud and clear to would-be migrants not to come via Roxham Road anymore.”

For months, the Legault government has been calling on Ottawa to close Roxham Road and to transfer asylum seekers to other provinces. The influx of would-be refugees in Quebec has put significant strain on the housing, education and social services sectors, the government says.

According to federal government statistics, more than 39,000 people claimed asylum in Quebec in 2022 after crossing into Canada outside official ports of entry, mostly through Roxham Road. About 369 people who crossed irregularly over that period claimed asylum in the rest of the country. In total, around 64 per cent of all asylum claims in Canada in 2022 were made in Quebec.

In response to Legault’s letter to Trudeau, the office of federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said Monday that Ottawa had transferred thousands of migrants to Ontario to take pressure off Quebec, adding that the government was working with other provinces and municipalities to find other temporary accommodations.

Source: Legault pitches English Canada for closure of Roxham Road and transfer of migrants

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Close Roxham Road border crossing within 30 days, Poilievre urges

2023/02/23 Leave a comment

Could we not have some more serious discussion of solutions rather than simplistic Conservative virtue signalling and, for that matter, simplistic Liberal virtue signalling?

Ironically, arguments that Canada is “broken” apply particularly in the case of immigration and thus no need for cheap points:

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for the federal government to close the Roxham Road border crossing within 30 days amid a rising influx of migrants entering Quebec irregularly and spurring calls from Quebec leaders who say their communities cannot keep up with the pace.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday, Poilievre laid the blame for the surge of migrants squarely at the feet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who he accused of encouraging irregular crossings at Roxham Road and not addressing a backlog of refugee claims.

The Conservative leader argued that Trudeau had already demonstrated Roxham Road could be closed without violating the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, and urged the government to do so again — failing to mention the entire border was shut down during that time.

“If we are a real country, we have borders. And if this is a real prime minister, he is responsible for those borders,” he said.

The Safe Third Country Agreement requires asylum seekers arriving in Canada or the U.S. to make their claim in the first country they arrive in and forbids them from first arriving in one country and then making a claim in another. However, migrants who cross the border between official posts can claim asylum after they are intercepted by police as they are already on Canadian soil.

Poilievre’s comments come as Quebec Premier Francois Legault this week called on Trudeau to make the Roxham Road crossings a top priority for next month’s meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and to renegotiate the agreement.

He reportedly told Trudeau in a letter on Sunday the pact has pushed asylum seekers to Roxham Road, and that a renegotiated treaty should apply to all entry points.

On Tuesday, the Globe and Mail published an English-language letter by Legault where he said the number of would-be asylum seekers entering Quebec “has exploded,” pushing the province’s social services to their limits. The premier also pitched other provinces to take in some of those migrants.

The public letter did not include concerns reportedly expressed by Legault in his letter to Trudeau that the influx of migrants is threatening the French language in Montreal, or his request for more money to pay for the costs of caring for asylum seekers.

Federal statistics show that more than 39,000 people claimed asylum after they were intercepted by the RCMP crossing Canada’s land border into Quebec in 2022, compared with only 369 in the rest of the country.

In total, around 64 per cent of all asylum claims in Canada in 2022 were made in Quebec.

Last year’s numbers were a sharp increase from 2021, when 4,095 migrants were intercepted on Quebec’s southern border.

Poilievre did not offer specifics about how to address the immigration backlog — currently sitting at more than 910,000 applications — but did say money can be redirected from policing the irregular crossing to bolstering the legal immigration system, which he said would help reduce wait times.

“We probably have the best immigration system in the entire world. But Trudeau is breaking it,” he said.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said in a statement to Global News that proposing to close Roxham Road within 30 days “without advancing a plan to manage the consequences will not solve the problem” and would only promote more irregular border crossings elsewhere.

“The ideas put forward by Pierre Poilievre are not only reckless, but they lack depth and understanding,” Fraser said.

“As Canada works to navigate a global migration crisis, it is our responsibility to implement real, long-term solutions.”

Fraser acknowledged that Quebec has faced “immense pressure” and said Ottawa has transferred thousands of migrants elsewhere in Canada since last June.

A spokesperson for Fraser’s office clarified that to date, those transfers have been to Ontario, but a “pan-Canadian” approach is in the works.

“We are continuing to work with other provinces and municipalities to identify communities that have the capacity to accommodate additional asylum claimants as we work toward a long-term solution,” Fraser said in his statement.

The minister also encouraged people who want to enter Canada to consider other ways to enter the country.

Source: Close Roxham Road border crossing within 30 days, Poilievre urges

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Near Roxham Road, RCMP border patrol relies on locals’ help – and tests their patience

2023/02/21 Leave a comment

Interesting account regarding the local residents affected:

While politicians in Ottawa and Quebec City bicker and negotiate over what to do about Roxham Road, locals must put up with frequent RCMP stops while at the same time trying to keep an eye open to help Mounties enforce border rules.

Matthias Kaiser, a farmer who owns land in the area near what is now internationally known as the official unofficial point of entry for asylum seekers in Canada, is used to interacting with law-enforcement agents from both sides of the border.

But with the rise in irregular crossings at Roxham Road and the RCMP operation there, “it’s more severe now,” he said. Mr. Kaiser, members of his family and his employees were all stopped on several occasions by the RCMP last fall.

Once, he was intercepted while driving with his wife on Alberton Road – Mr. Kaiser’s private farm road lined by his soy, alfalfa, and corn fields that runs 2½ kilometres to the east of Roxham Road and is the subject of intense scrutiny by the RCMP. Five police cars came after them.

“Unbelievable. I thought they were going to arrest me … When they asked me what I [was doing] here, I said, ‘Well, I drive on my road, and what are you doing on my road?’ ” Mr. Kaiser recalled.

He allowed the RCMP to patrol Alberton Road under the condition that they “put some gravel down once in a while,” something they have not done yet, he said.

On another occasion last fall, officers stopped his youngest son, driving with a Guatemalan employee. Somebody had to go and get the employee’s paperwork to prove he was not being smuggled.

RCMP officers also stopped other employees during harvest time while they were transporting truckloads of grain, saying they were looking for someone who got out of a car in the area. The interruption disrupted Mr. Kaiser’s operations, and he lost patience with the officers. “I had to apologize” after the heated exchange, the farmer said.

“I’m surprised they’re not here yet,” Mr. Kaiser said of the RCMP when The Globe and Mail met him on the private road Friday morning.

Sure enough, the flashing lights of a police cruiser and two agents appeared near The Globe’s rental vehicle parked on the farm road. Constable Tommy Pepin politely asked for ID and explained they wanted to make sure the vehicle was not abandoned by someone who planned to cross the U.S. border through the fields on foot.

Mr. Kaiser stressed that he has nothing against the officers and wants to maintain a good relationship with the RCMP. Most stops are short, he said, and he understands the importance for federal agents to look for potential smugglers.

But he questions the relevance of such efforts on the Canadian side. “They’re running after us, they’re running after one man but on the other hand, they let thousands come in, which they have no control over,” he reasoned, referring to Roxham Road.

The famous cul-de-sac, at the border between New York State and Quebec’s Montérégie region, has become the primary route for irregular entries into Canada in recent years. The RCMP intercepted 39,171 asylum seekers who did not use official ports of entry to enter Quebec in 2022, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data, compared with just 369 in the rest of the country.

People who cross irregularly elsewhere are often brought to the RCMP’s Roxham Road facility for their application to be processed there, said Sergeant Charles Poirier, a spokesperson for the Mounties.

The long-standing Safe Third Country Agreement requires border agents from the United States and Canada to turn away asylum seekers from the other country if they arrive at official land border crossings. Because of this and given all the media attention it has received, most people coming from the U.S. who want to claim asylum in Canada use Roxham Road to avoid being turned away.

But sometimes, through bad luck, lack of knowledge of the area or for other reasons, people cross elsewhere, Sgt. Poirier said.

The RCMP’s main concern remains the smuggling of items such as firearms and drugs, he said. As the interaction with Constable Pepin showed, Mounties are also on the watch for smugglers and migrants going the opposite direction, into the U.S., sometimes risking their lives trying to cross in isolated areas in difficult weather.

This is likely what happened to Fritznel Richard, a Haitian migrant whose body was found on Mr. Kaiser’s land on Jan. 5. A little less than a year earlier, an Indian family of four died near the borderbetween Manitoba and the U.S.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection noticed a drastic uptick in recent months of people trying to enter North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin illegally from Canada. Swanton sector, which includes counties in New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, also had “historic highs” of apprehensions and encounters with migrants illegally crossing into the U.S., the U.S. border service said in a news release last week.

Sgt. Poirier worked for years with the local RCMP detachment, whose agents take care of Roxham Road arrivals and patrol a vast territory between Valleyfield and Lake Memphremagog. He said good relationships with locals are paramount to help prevent smuggling and avoid other deaths.

Dominique Martin, the owner of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle’s Coolbreeze camping, said RCMP officers have questioned his clients on occasion. “If you walk on the road with a backpack, they are sure to stop you,” he said. Conversely, Mr. Martin called the Mounties several times when taxis left people near the campground, suspecting they made the hour drive from Montreal to cross irregularly into the U.S.

“It’s often people who call us,” Sgt. Poirier said of the locals. The RCMP monitors numerous surveillance cameras on the border, but “we need their intelligence,” he stressed.

Source: Near Roxham Road, RCMP border patrol relies on locals’ help – and tests their patience

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Yakabuski: Déplacer le problème

2023/02/20 Leave a comment

Good analysis of the issues and the problem for the government, particularly should the Supreme Court rule against the STCA. Potential for a comparable impact to the 1985 Singh decision which required the government to provide due process to anyone who arrived on Canadian soil:

La ministre de l’Immigration du Québec, Christine Fréchette, s’est dite heureuse d’apprendre que les autorités fédérales avaient transféré vers l’Ontario la presque totalité des quelque 500 demandeurs d’asile arrivés par le chemin Roxham en fin de semaine dernière. Selon Mme Fréchette, voilà bien la preuve que le gouvernement du Québec « peut avoir des résultats » en exprimant sans cesse son mécontentement face à l’inaction d’Ottawa devant le flux grandissant de migrants irréguliers qui passent par le chemin Roxham depuis sa réouverture, en novembre 2021.

La ministre Fréchette a imploré le gouvernement fédéral de continuer d’envoyer ailleurs au Canada plus des trois quarts des demandeurs d’asile qui traversent ce poste frontalier non officiel pour ne laisser au Québec qu’une proportion de migrants équivalente à son poids démographique au sein de la fédération canadienne. « On espère que ça va se maintenir dans le temps, et que ça va être la nouvelle approche de gestion de la frontière », a-t-elle ajouté.

Toutefois, le bonheur des uns fait parfois le malheur des autres. Dans la région de Niagara, dans le sud de l’Ontario, l’arrivée des migrants en provenance du chemin Roxham suscite de vives inquiétudes chez les autorités municipales et les organismes de bienfaisance. Cette région est dotée d’un plus grand nombre de chambres d’hôtel que la moyenne en raison de sa vocation touristique, active surtout en été. Alors, il n’est pas surprenant qu’Ottawa l’ait choisie comme destination pour les migrants que le Québec dit ne plus avoir la capacité d’accueillir.

Or, alors que le gouvernement s’apprêterait à louer environ 2000 chambres d’hôtel afin d’y loger temporairement les migrants dans le sud de l’Ontario, certains intervenants expriment des réserves sur la nouvelle stratégie d’Ottawa. « Sans préavis, sans préparation, cela nous met dans une position très difficile, a affirmé cette semaine le maire de Niagara Falls, Jim Diodati, dans une entrevue au St. Catharines Standard. Comment pouvons-nous gérer une situation comme celle-ci quand nous avons déjà une crise du logement et une crise d’accessibilité au logement ? Cela va absolument exacerber un problème déjà existant. » À quelques semaines du début de la saison touristique printanière, il a dit prévoir « un gros problème » à l’horizon.

En agissant de la sorte dans ce dossier, le gouvernement du premier ministre Justin Trudeau démontre de nouveau ses piètres capacités en matière de gestion de crise. Il est pris entre sa base progressiste, qui souhaiterait ouvrir les frontières canadiennes à tous ceux « qui fuient la persécution, la terreur et la guerre » — comme M. Trudeau avait lui-même promis de le faire en 2017 dans un gazouillis dorénavant entré dans l’histoire —, et les contradictions de ses propres politiques d’immigration.

Les véritables réfugiés se voient damer le pion par des passeurs qui exploitent la vulnérabilité des migrants fuyant des conditions de vie difficiles en Amérique latine ou en Afrique pour leur retirer le peu d’argent dont ils disposent. On a beau vouloir être généreux envers ces personnes, l’intégrité de notre système d’immigration en prend pour son rhume et le Canada consolide sa réputation de passoire dont profite quiconque veut s’en prévaloir.

Ottawa se trouve dépourvu d’arguments face à un gouvernement américain qui n’a aucun intérêt à accéder à sa demande de « moderniser » l’Entente sur les tiers pays sûrs (ETPS). Les quelque 40 000 demandeurs d’asile qui sont arrivés au Canada par le chemin Roxham en 2022 ne constituent qu’une goutte d’eau dans l’océan migratoire américain. Même des politiciens démocrates comme le maire de New York, Eric Adams, ne voient pas pourquoi ils devraient se priver d’utiliser cette « faille » dans l’ETPS pour pallier quelque peu leur propre crise migratoire. Avouons-le, leur crise est infiniment plus sérieuse que la nôtre.

Alors, quoi faire ? Le transfert des demandeurs d’asile du chemin Roxham vers les autres provinces permet peut-être au gouvernement fédéral de réduire la pression sur le Québec, mais il risque de créer des tensions ailleurs au pays. Il est aussi possible que les passeurs voient dans la démarche fédérale un geste qui facilite leur travail. La capacité d’accueil du Québec atteint peut-être ses limites, mais le transfert par Ottawa des demandeurs d’asile vers l’Ontario crée plus de possibilités pour les profiteurs du système.

Espérons que le gouvernement Trudeau se dotera d’un plan B au cas où la Cour suprême invaliderait l’Entente sur les tiers pays sûrs. En 2020, la Cour fédérale avait trouvé que cette entente violait le droit à la vie, à la liberté et à la sécurité de la personne garanti par la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. La Cour d’appel fédérale avait par la suite infirmé cette décision.

Toutefois, la notion selon laquelle les États-Unis ne constituent pas un pays « sûr » pour les demandeurs d’asile jouit de l’appui de beaucoup d’adeptes au Canada. En cas d’invalidation de l’ETPS, le Canada devrait accueillir tous les demandeurs d’asile qui arrivent en provenance des États-Unis, même ceux qui passent par un poste frontalier officiel. Cela créerait un méchant dilemme pour M. Trudeau, au point de peut-être même le forcer à répudier le fameux gazouillis dont il semble encore si fier.

Source: Déplacer le problème

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The U.S. isn’t rushing to deal with Canada’s Roxham Road migrant problem

2023/02/17 Leave a comment

Realpolitik, no incentive for USA and off-loading some of their “problems” makes meaningful and successful negotiations unlikely, although Michael Barutciski argues that it can be done (Is a diplomatic solution possible for Roxham Road?:

On the day that Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette celebrated the mass relocation of Roxham Road migrants to Ontario, her boss, Premier François Legault, told reporters he couldn’t understand why the U.S. wasn’t willing to take border-crossers back.

He met U.S. Ambassador David Cohen on Tuesday, and then said he doesn’t know why the U.S. won’t change a border agreement so people who enter Canada at Roxham Road, an unofficial crossing between Quebec and New York State, can be returned to the U.S.

“I said to him, I don’t understand why it is taking so long to settle with the United States.”

Mr. Legault is an intelligent politician, so he must be deliberately playing dumb.

He knows the relief that government leaders feel when their intractable problem becomes someone else’s. Ms. Fréchette said the Quebec government was “very happy” that 372 of the 380 people who crossed into Canada at Roxham Road since Saturday had been relocated outside Quebec.

Surely Mr. Legault must have a clue as to why the U.S. government isn’t rushing to solve Canada’s Roxham Road issue.

The U.S. position is not an accident. It has for decades resisted doing what Canada wants it to do on this file.

To be clear, Quebec is right to want some of the migrants, many of whom will seek asylum, to be relocated. The RCMP intercepted 39,171 people entering Canada at Roxham Road in 2022, and the province, and especially Montreal, complained their capacity to settle people was strained. The border is Canada’s responsibility, not just Montreal’s, or Quebec’s.

And certainly, it would be easier on all levels of government in Canada if the United States just took all those people back. But it has resisted.

Politicians shouldn’t act as though getting the U.S. to change should be a snap. Justin Trudeau’s government has hinted a deal might be coming, but we might want to see it before we believe it. You’d have to think there would be some serious quid pro quo. It isn’t the Americans’ border problem.

There was a period in the pandemic when the U.S. did accept people back, in theory temporarily, when both countries closed their borders. Not many people tried to cross at Roxham Road. But the U.S. ended that arrangement in November, 2021. People started crossing there again.

There was a long history before that. At one time, asylum-seekers could simply show up at any official border crossing and claim refugee status in Canada. But as the numbers grew in the 1990s, Ottawa tried and fail to make a deal. The U.S. declined. It was only after the 9/11 attacks, in a broad border pact, that the U.S. accepted a Safe Third Country Agreement that allowed Canada to return asylum-seekers who arrived via the U.S. to make their claim there.

But it only applied at official border posts, and for a pretty simple reason: The United States wanted it that way. It didn’t want the trouble of accepting people who might show up anywhere along the long border with Canada.

The agreement was always opposed by refugee advocates, but from the start there was also a concern that it would encourage people to cross the border in illicit places. Jason Kenney has said he tried to convince the U.S. to change it when he was immigration minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, to no avail.

Fast forward to now, when Roxham Road has become a well-travelled route, and the U.S. still isn’t itching to change it. And we shouldn’t be surprised, when the hottest political issue in the U.S. is illegal entries across the Mexican border, that the U.S. is not racing to stop 40,000 people from leaving.

If the U.S. did apply the Safe Third Country Agreement outside official border crossings, it would shut down Roxham Road, but more people would cross at the many other locations along the boundary.

Taking them all back would require more work and more patrols along the Canadian border when the U.S. devotes its resources to the Mexican boundary. The U.S. Border Patrol has 2,073 agents along the northern boundary, compared to 16,070 agents at the southern border – whose patrols logged more than a million “encounters” with border crossers in 2022.

And U.S. President Joe Biden couldn’t expect to be celebrated for making a deal with Canada that prevents tens of thousands of asylum-seekers from leaving the U.S. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat like Mr. Biden, has been giving asylum-seekers bus tickets to get to Roxham Road. No one should be surprised the U.S. isn’t jumping to “solve” this Canadian problem.

Source: The U.S. isn’t rushing to deal with Canada’s Roxham Road migrant problem

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