ICYMI: The real tragedy of Mavis Otuteye’s death: it didn’t have to happen

2017/06/06 Leave a comment

Jason Markusoff argues that the safe-third country agreement should not be blamed for Otuteye’s death along with the need for better and more consistent information:

It isn’t clear if Otuteye was actually seeking to make a refugee claim once she encountered authorities in Manitoba; nor are the grounds she might have cited in seeking protection from persecution back home in Ghana. Most migrants crossing into Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia on foot aren’t seeking temporary visits, nor would they normally be granted them–they bid for refugee status, and if they lose, they face deportation to their home countries.

As the initial reports rolled in about a Ghanaian dying during a foot journey to Canada, immigration experts quickly decried the safe country agreement as the culprit. It’s the same problem they’ve cited throughout this upswing in irregular border crossing. However, this case may not point so surely to the folly of the U.S.-Canada agreement, but rather the merits of its compassionate exemptions: if a migrant is looking to be reunited with family, he or she is granted safe passage into Canada.

It also highlights problems in how information flows to prospective refugees. The Citizenship and Immigration Canada website explains this exemption to the safe country agreement. According to the National Post, Otuteye kept her border plans largely a secret, meaning few people in the woman’s orbit had the chance to help her identify her options. Often, immigrant communities rely on word of mouth or message boards to figure out how to traverse boundaries and reach safety. Immigration lawyers in Canada often get called, but are barred from offering counsel to would-be border-hoppers. Sometimes there is paranoia that a phone call to the wrong person can lead to an immigration officer’s roundup in the U.S.; this has become a bigger fear in the Trump era than before.

Perhaps, had the safe third country agreement never been in place, nobody would have felt the need to make their way into Canada by crossing ditches and fields, and nobody would have created a familiar path that Otuteye apparently felt compelled to follow. Even without this tragic case, there are good reasons experts cite to scrap the deal–the very risk of further deaths still exists among legitimate asylum-seekers, who genuinely have no alternative way of reaching Canada. But this tragic story does not, on its own, represent the straw that finally fells this problematic agreement.

Source: The real tragedy of Mavis Otuteye’s death: it didn’t have to happen – Macleans.ca

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Liberals postpone indefinitely overhaul of asylum claim system

2017/05/17 Leave a comment

Interesting. An overhaul beyond the original campaign promise of an expert panel to determine which countries should be considered as safe would be complex by itself, not to mention the politics involved:

A Liberal election promise to overhaul the way asylum claims are handled has been postponed indefinitely despite rising numbers of people seeking refuge in Canada putting the system at risk, The Canadian Press has learned.

One of the options on the table, multiple sources have told The Canadian Press, is rejigging the historic Immigration and Refugee Board, and giving some of its authority over to the Immigration Department itself.

But those advocating for the government to do something before backlogs threaten the integrity of the system say they are running up against a Liberal government seeming to have lost interest in spending any more money or political capital to help asylum seekers.

The starting point is the designated country of origins system, which determines how fast asylum claims are heard based on where they are from – a system that should, in theory, help weed out unfounded claims faster.

Internal evaluations have shown that hasn’t quite worked, and the system has drawn the ire of refugee advocates for creating a two-tier approach that includes unworkable timelines for hearing cases and their appeals. Elements of the program have already been struck down by the Federal Court.

The Liberals had been on the cusp of doing away with it, going even farther than their original promise to use an expert panel to determine which countries belonged on that list.

But a planned January roll-out was postponed after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump and the subsequent Liberal cabinet shuffle that saw a replacement of the federal immigration minister.

Then in March, as the issue of illegal border crossers dominated global headlines and Question Period, plans to repeal the designated-country-of-origin scheme were scrapped again, sources said.

They haven’t been rescheduled, even as the IRB itself has been among those saying the system needs to go as a way to ease the pressure.

“It would simplify our life from a case management point of view,” chairperson Mario Dion said in an interview with The Canadian Press in March.

“I don’t have a political view.”

The Liberals do, observers said.

When they came into power and moved to make good on a promise to resettle 25,000 Syrians, the government believed it had broad public support for refugees, said immigration lawyer and refugee advocate Lorne Waldman.

Things have changed.

“The concern at the centre is that support has dissipated significantly because of a series of factors, the most important one being the emergence of Donald Trump,” he said.

“And I think the concern is amplified by the Conservative leadership race where you have many of the candidates taking a very anti-immigrant posturing in their campaign.”

Source: Liberals postpone indefinitely overhaul of asylum claim system – Macleans.ca

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Is Trump’s refugee crackdown threat pushing asylum seekers into Canada?

2017/02/13 Leave a comment

is_trumps_refugee_crackdown_threat_pushing_asylum_seekers_into_canada____toronto_starNumbers still relatively small but significant increase:

Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, only those asylum seekers who have family already living in Canada or those who have already been refused refugee status in the United States will be considered for asylum if they show up at Canadian land border posts.

But those who cross illegally are exploiting a loophole in the law — the conditions of the Safe Third Country Agreement do not apply to people who are already in Canada when they make a claim for asylum.

The Canada Border Service Agency will not reveal how many asylum seekers are crossing into Canada illegally. But overall, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people seeking asylum in recent months.

In 2016, there were 2,529 asylum claims made at Quebec’s land border crossings, according to statistics from the agency. That figure averages out to 211 claimants each month.

But the numbers started to climb dramatically this fall. There were 289 refugee claimants in October, 369 in November and 591 in December.

Montreal immigration lawyer Éric Taillefer said his caseload of refugee claimants began to increase noticeably in December.

“Before I had one from time to time and now in December and early January there have been many,” he said, adding that most of his clients are from coming from Eritrea, Iraq and Libya.

“These are people who have fears of returning to their country of origin,” said Handfield.

Most of his clients are people who were already living in the United States, but others obtain tourist visas to travel to the U.S. and use that as the entry point for their trek to Canada. Despite American fears about border security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Handfield said it remains easier to obtain the necessary permissions to enter the U.S. than those required to enter Canada.

Source: Is Trump’s refugee crackdown threat pushing asylum seekers into Canada? | Toronto Star

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