Officials scramble to house newcomers
While the venerable Royal Victoria Hospital is converted into a makeshift shelter for another 320 migrants, border agents stationed near Roxham Rd. — the unofficial entry point to Quebec — are struggling to process another 250 asylum seekers from the U.S. every day.
The crunch has become so acute about 700 people are sleeping on chairs, benches or the floor of the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle border station, some 10 kilometres away, waiting for the Canadian army to erect tents for them while border agents verify who they are and whether they are admissible.
A hundred Canadian Forces members were deployed to the border Wednesday to build what may be the first quasi-refugee camp in Canada.
“There are no showers, but there is food, water, blankets and access to bathrooms,” said Patrick Lefort, the Canada Border Services Agency’s regional director general for Quebec. “We don’t have beds right now, but we’re looking at how to ensure a basic level of comfort.”
At a news conference in Montreal on Wednesday, federal, provincial and municipal government representatives outlined the efforts being made on different fronts to house and help the newcomers.
They repeatedly assured reporters that the situation is “under control.”
But for those at the border and in Montreal trying to establish an efficient process for dealing with the massive influx of refugees and migrants, the numbers are daunting:
6,580 people entered Quebec — most of them via Roxham Rd. — between January and June 30.
An estimated 4,750 asylumseekers have arrived since July 1.
2,581 newcomers are currently being housed in temporary shelters like the Olympic Stadium, and soon the old Royal Victoria Hospital.
700 have found permanent housing.
211 asylum-seekers arrived Tuesday.
“Obviously we can’t say how long this situation will last, but we are controlling it,” said Francine Dupuis, the head of PRAIDA, the Quebec government agency affiliated with the health ministry and tasked with providing asylumseekers with housing, food and clinical services. “It’s an unusual situation, but it’s not the first extreme peak we have dealt with.”
The majority of the asylumseekers are Haitians who had been living in the United States but who fear being deported back to Haiti. In May, President Donald Trump announced that, as of January 2018, Haitians would no longer have special protected status in the United States, protection granted to them following the earthquake in 2010.
But among the new arrivals are also many Indian, Mexican, Colombian and Turkish nationals, who have come to Canada in the wake of Trump’s anti-immigrant election campaign and statements, including attempts to pass executive orders to ban certain immigrants from Muslim countries from the United States altogether and crack down on undocumented migrants.
DELAYS EXPECTED
Here in Canada, asylum-seekers are entitled to a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board within 60 days of filing a claim. Given the bottleneck at the border, some of the asylum-seekers are opening files at the border, but being asked to complete them in Montreal, Lefort explained.
Over the past few years, 40 to 50 per cent of Haitian claimants have been granted refugee status, while Canada began to deport failed Haitian claimants in March 2017. Since then, 296 Haitian nationals have been deported — 19 to Haiti, and 277 to the United States.
But for these most recent claimants, the delay could be longer before they even get a hearing, acknowledged Louis Dumas, the director general of the domestic network of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. There was already a growing backlog at the IRB, with the increase in requests for asylum starting in January. The thousands who have come since then are exacerbating the problem.
“We’re doing what we can,” Dumas said. “We all agree we’re dealing with exceptional circumstances, so we need to find ways to respect our commitments.”
More people are being hired at the IRB, he said, and they are looking for innovative ways to increase their capacity to hear more claims.
But while the claimants wait, they will need more permanent housing and financial support, and the children will need to go to school.
According to labour ministry statistics in July 2017, 1,750 asylum-seekers applied for “last resort financial help” from the province, compared to 200 who applied in July 2016.
Though the education ministry has been slow to fulfil its promise to allow undocumented children to go to school for free, a representative said all the Montreal-area school boards are prepared to accept these new students starting in the fall. Christian Rousseau could not say how many children will be registered this fall, but the ministry has prepared pamphlets for newcomers in different languages, he said, including Haitian Creole.