Liberals hit with influx of asylum-seekers
The plight of the displaced and Canadian compassion for those in need have played a central role in the brief history of Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister. They have served him well. His call to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees and his challenge for us to “live up to the values that we cherish as a country” helped turn the 2015 election campaign in his favour after Stephen Harper’s reaction to the tragic death of young Alan Kurdi was deemed too clinical.
Mere weeks after his election, video of Trudeau welcoming a Syrian refugee family at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, handing a teddy bear to a toddler, garnered invaluable exposure worldwide.
He appointed an immigration minister, Ahmed Hussen, with a compelling personal story, having been born and raised in Somalia before settling in Toronto’s Regent Park as a teenager.
And there was the now infamous January 2017 tweet a day after U.S. President Donald Trump initially sought to ban refugees and visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength,” Trudeau tweeted with the hashtag #WelcometoCanada
But empathy can take you only so far and social media can be a double-edged sword.
After a flow of asylum-seekers over 17 months — not a flood, but also not insignificant — Liberal inaction is not serving would-be refugees, those in legitimate immigration queues, junior governments or Canadians in general.
Since the beginning of last year, more than 27,000 asylum-seekers have walked across the Canada-U.S. border, escaping Trump’s threats to end their status in the U.S. or simply fleeing what they believe is a hostile environment for new arrivals.
Many wrongly believe they can walk across an unofficial border crossing and begin a new life in compassionate Canada.
The government has dispatched ministers and senior officials to countries that were the source of the influx, including Haiti and Nigeria. They sent Haitian-born MP Emmanuel Dubourg to Miami with a message for would-be asylum-seekers from Haiti, Africa and Central America: there are laws in this country and they may be sent back.
There is scant evidence the messaging has worked.
At issue is a loophole in a Canada-U.S. agreement that compels asylum-seekers to make that application in the first country in which they arrived.
It was entered into by a former Liberal government to deter asylumshoppers.
But the agreement pertains only to official border crossings, not the welltrod unofficial points of entry into Manitoba and, most notably, Quebec, the now famous Roxham Road entry from New York state to Canada.
The government says it is working at the “highest levels” with the U.S. to deal with asylum-seekers who are abusing U.S. travel documents, expediting work permits for these arrivals, and moving them on to other cities, including Toronto, or other parts of the country which needs workers.
The rate of refusal after hearings is also increasing.
But these are people, not statistics, and a compassionate country doesn’t help a would-be refugee by seizing them at the Quebec border and then busing them to Toronto or, worse, sending traumatized claimants to small towns to work without the needed linguistic or legal support.
Finally, Liberal mismanagement of this file has meant off-loading the problem and its costs on junior governments, which has caused resentment in Quebec and is now bursting the system in Toronto.
The city is using college residences to house new arrivals, but they will soon be full, then given over to students, creating a domino effect which means refugee claimants will be housed in existing shelter facilities, forcing hardship for those already using those facilities.
Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel has kept the heat on the government, demanding it close the “loophole” in the Safe Third Country Agreement.
But there is little impetus for the Trump administration to negotiate. It is happy to see the backs of those asylum-seekers.
Rempel also called for federal legislation deeming the entire Canadian border subject to the conditions of the pact, but that would surely have to be negotiated as part of a bilateral agreement.
Canada is but a puddle in a worldwide ocean of the displaced in 2018.
But government inaction and offloading has created a problem larger than the numbers of those who would seek a new life here.
And Rempel may be sadly correct on one thing — continued mishandling of this file could severely test this country’s deep well of compassion for newcomers.