Flow of asylum seekers to Cornwall slowed

Claims expected to be reviewed this week

• The federal government has informed the City of Cornwall that they are not sending any more asylum seekers to Nav Centre — at least for the time being.

With no more new people being sent to Cornwall, the government expects all the asylum seekers who are already staying at the Nav Centre will have their applications processed and be moved to more long- term housing in the Montreal area by the end of this week.

Cornwall Mayor Leslie O’Shaughnessy confirmed that this was the message given to the municipality on Friday when they met with t he various government agencies running the temporary housing program.

“The l atest i ndication from Friday’s briefing indicates that the asylum seekers that are presently at the Nav Centre will be processed this week, and they feel that all of them will be processed and moved to Montreal and, at this point in time, there are no more scheduled transfers to the City of Cornwall,” said the mayor.

That doesn’t mean that there won’t be any more asylums seekers coming, cautioned O’Shaughnessy, only that there are no plans to send any more at the moment.

For this reason, the tent city which was erected behind the Nav Centre by the Canadian Armed Forces will remain in place.

The tents were set up shortly after the asylum seekers began arriving almost two weeks ago in case the Nav Centre building ran out of room to house them. That did not happen, and the tent city has been completely unused so far.

But according to O’Shaughnessy, the federal government intends to keep the tents up and the small maintenance force of soldiers in place at least until October, just in case it’s still needed.

“It will stay and be reevaluated on Oct. 1,” he said.

The reason given to the municipality for why the government is not sending any more asylum seekers to Cornwall is because the housing facility in Lacolle, Que., has been able to accommodate all of the new people crossing the border from the U. S.

The mayor did not know for certain this meant that crossing at the Canada/ U. S. border in Lacolle had fallen to manageable l evels, but Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale indicated during an interview with t he Cornwall StandardFreeholder newspaper last week that the number of crossings was declining on a daily basis.

“All we know is that the backlog has been cleared and all the asylum seekers are being handled in Montreal,” said O’Shaughnessy “But that could change.”

Aside from relaying what the municipality had been told at the briefing, the mayor declined to give any reaction to the news on behalf of the city. Public opinion in Cornwall on the asylum seeker issue appears largely split, particularly on social media.

Whe n city council narrowly voted against supplying the asylum seekers with free bus passes, the move was met with equal parts condemnation and approval from residents online.

THE BACKLOG HAS BEEN CLEARED AND ALL ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE BEING HANDLED IN MONTREAL.