Illegal border crossers should be turned away

Editor:

Meddlesome Montreal Mayor Dennis Coderre is grandstanding again. He has declared Montreal a sanctuary city for the flush of illegal migrants crossing the U.S.-Canada border and he wants a full array of tax-funded benefits for them. Coderre needs a reminder that he stopped being the Liberal Immigration Minister in 2003 and that conspiring to assist others to break the law is an offence.

It’s important to distinguish between refugees and people who seek to bypass our normal refugee and immigration processes.

Contrary to some of the media commentary, these migrants are not refugees. They are people who are in the U.S. illegally and who now face deportation because they have no valid visas or because their refugee claims have been denied.

According to the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement, in effect since 2005, people must apply for refugee status in the country they first arrive in. They don’t get to re-bid their refugee application in the other country should their initial application be denied.

Under this protocol, people who seek to enter the other country through a border control post must be turned away. That’s why migrants are crossing illegally instead of at our border stations.

Illegal residents in the U.S. are fearful of deportation as the new administration moves to crack down on them in a more determined way than the last.

As a result, we see a growing volume in human trafficking and illegal border crossings. This could become a flood as the weather improves and migrants remain motivated by the belief that Canada is prepared to accommodate their wishes. It’s troubling that we have absolutely no idea of their criminal histories, something we’ll be learning the hard way.

Rather than facilitating the entry of these migrants and absorbing the costs of their claims for asylum and eventual deportation, we should deny them entry, full stop. This means intercepting them and delivering them to the nearest CBSA border post where they can be processed and handed over to U.S. authorities in accordance with the 2004 agreement.

Bona fide refugees and immigrants are quite different from people who want to bypass the system or to re-bid their refugee cases. These migrants tried for gold in the U.S. and failed. They shouldn’t be compensated with silver in Canada. This is patently unfair to us and to people who want to enter our country through legal processes.

John Thompson, Kaleden