CANADA’S ILLEGAL ALIENS LIVING DOWN SOUTH.
AS MANY AS 100,000 CANADIANS LIVE UNDER RADAR AS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
I THINK IT’S GOING TO AFFECT EVERY NATIONALITY, REGARDLESS OF WHERE YOU’RE FROM. IF YOU’RE HERE WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, YOU’RE MORE LIKELY TO BE CAUGHT AND PROSECUTED, UNLIKE THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES IN THE U. S. — ROSANNA BERARDI, N.Y. LAWYER
EVEN SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS A SPEEDING TICKET CAN LEAD TO A DEPORTATION HEARING.
It was the late 1990s when t he Canadian man crossed the border into the United States, a visitor like millions of others, free to stay up to six months.
Except that he never actually left the U.S., and never obtained U. S. government permission to stick around. He simply made a new life for himself in America.
For the last 18 years, the Canadian has been an illegal immigrant.
“He has a business in the U. S. and it’s active and he has employees,” says Fadi Minawi, the man’s Torontobased lawyer. “He came to me and asked: ‘ How do I get legal?’”
As unlawful immigrants become a target for President Donald Trump’s administration, a surprising number of Canadians could be asking the same question right now.
Think of “illegal aliens” and the stereotype that likely comes to mind is one of impoverished Latin Americans slipping across the border into Texas or Arizona, seeking a new life in a more prosperous land.
It seems that an army of Canadian citizens — despite coming from a place of relative affluence and opportunity — live illicitly in the U. S. One research institute estimates the total at 100,000, while a recent American government report said nearly that many Canadians outstayed their legal welcome — and failed to leave — in one year alone.
I mmigration l awyers confirm they regularly hear from Canadians who have exceeded the time they can lawfully be in the U.S., sometimes by years.
Canadian il l egals approached by the National Post declined to be interviewed.
But lawyers say they wind up in such predicaments because they’ve gotten romantically entwined with Americans, they’ve sunk other sorts of roots or have decided to remain — underground — when their work or student visas expire. Some know they’re on thin ice legally, others wrongly believe they have a right to linger as long as they want.
“A lot of it comes down to ignorance, naivete or love,” said Canadian- born Cedric Shen, who practices immigration law in Los Angeles.
Minawi, t he Torontobased lawyer who’s also licensed in New York State, said many Canadians think “Oh, well, we’re neighbours, we can be in the U. S. ( indefinitely).”
“But this is not a right for them,” he noted. “Many times, these people find that they’ve overstayed, and they’ve built their lives in the U.S. and they don’t know what to do.”
The total numbers still are dwarfed by undocumented immigrants from places like Mexico, which has an estimated 5.8 million illegals in the U. S. But when the U. S. Department of Homeland Security published its first report last year on people who overstayed their legally permitted time in the country, Canadians led all other nationalities.
Canadians can be in the U.S. for six months as visitors, longer as students or under various work visas. But in 2015 alone, 93,000 Canadians whose time was up failed to go home, the Homeland Security report said.
That’s more than twice the number of overstaying Mexicans. And yet, this nation’s citizens are seldom mentioned by immigration hawks like Trump.
“I’ve never met an illegal Canadian,” quipped Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham recently in explaining the emphasis on undocumented Hispanic arrivals. “People come in from poor countries to work here. They come to Myrtle Beach, Canadians do. They enjoy themselves, they go swimming in March, and they go home.”
When asked, representatives for the Department of Homeland Security offered no comment on whether the U. S. considers Canadian illegals to be a significant problem.
There is certainly one key difference between Canadians and, say, Mexicans living unlawfully in the U. S.: the former usually enter the country legitimately and then don’t exit; the latter tend to sneak into the U. S. without documentation at all.
Both, however, are equally in violation of American law, said one expert. The silence on Canada’s illicit migrants likely points instead to a racially tinged double standard, with a blind eye generally turned toward the predominantly Caucasian illegals from the north, argued César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a professor at the University of Denver law school.
“There are approximately 93,000 Canadians who violate immigration laws simply by coming here with permission to stay temporarily, and never leaving,” he said. “The next logical step would seem to be, if there isn’t to be a discriminatory bent to immigration enforcement, we ought to be expending resources targeting Canadians.”
Hernandez said he isn’t really advocating such a campaign — for any illegal immigrant — only pointing out what he sees as an inequity.
Michael Niren, a Torontobased immigration lawyer, views it a little differently. “There is a climate of trust, let’s put it that way,” between Canada and its neighbour, he said.
But if illegals from this country have had a comparatively easy ride to date, that may be about to change.
Trump’s determination to crack down on unauthorized immigrants — with plans to triple the number of deportation officers — could make it more risky for even Canadians to languish unlawfully in the U. S., some advocates say.
“I think it’s going to affect every nationality, regardless of where you’re from,” said Rosanna Berardi, a Buffalobased immigration attorney. “If you’re here without authorization, you’re more likely to be caught and pros- ecuted, unlike the last several decades in the U.S.”
Noting that many municipal police forces were deputized to act on immigration matters after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she said she warns unauthorized clients that even a simple traffic stop can land them in deep trouble.
“The message is always, ‘ Keep a low profile, don’t drive, stay out of public areas like bus stations or airports where there tends to be law enforcement,’” Berardi said. “You’ve really got to be super careful.”
Exactly how many Canadians exist with that kind of uncertainty is not really known. Homeland Security declined a request to estimate the total number of illegals from here, and its overstay report last year doesn’t include those who overstayed but l eft after 2015, or overstays from previous years who never went.
The clearest pi c t ure comes from the Pew Research Center, which used federal government surveys to suggest that 100,000 Canadians were in the U. S. without authorization in 2014. That ties this country for 12th — with Peru, Haiti and Brazil — as a supplier of illegal immigrants.
“I certainly do have calls from people who say ‘ I’ve been out of status for years. I came in as a visitor or I finished school or I came in with a work visa and I just never left. And now what can I do?’ ” said Shen.
One thing they can do is marry an American citizen, a solid path to a green card, so long as the union is judged legitimate, the lawyer said.
Sometimes status can also be changed by obtaining a different kind of visa that legalizes the Canadian’s illicit presence. But failing that, the consequences are harsh.
Someone who overstays for six months to a year, leaves the U. S. and tries to get back in faces a threeyear ban. If they have stayed more than a year without authority, the ban is extended to 10 years.
That l eaves Minawi’s 18-years-unauthorized client with some tough choices. He likely will have to travel to Canada and apply at a U. S. mission for an investor- type visa, asking that the decadelong ban on getting back in be waived, the lawyer said.
There’s no guarantee he’ll get the waiver, of course, but the alternative — continuing to live illegally — seems untenable, said Minawi.
“You’d always be looking over your shoulder. Even something as simple as a speeding ticket can lead to a deportation hearing, and that’s something that’s out of your control,” he said. “Ultimately, you have to lift the bandage and you have to try to get legal as soon as possible.”