Refugees ‘have genuine asylum claims’
Almost 70 per cent of refugees who illegally cross the U.S. border into Canada are granted asylum here, despite the widespread public view that these border-crossers are not real refugees in need of protection.
That’s according to data released this week for the first time by the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Since January, the RCMP have intercepted more than 15,100 people entering through unguarded border entry points from the U.S., after Donald Trump became president and issued executive orders to expedite deportation of foreign nationals and ban immigration from certain countries.
Of the 10,790 asylum claims received March to September of this year, the refugee board has processed 592, or 5.4 per cent. Of those claims 69 per cent, or 408 cases, were granted asylum, while 141 were rejected. Fortythree other claims were either abandoned or withdrawn.
The acceptance rate for the border-crossers is even higher than the 63 per cent overall rate for asylum-seekers in 2016.
One expert said the high acceptance rate could be skewed if the refugee board is prioritizing cases from countries that tend to have stronger claims.
“The numbers show that the majority of the so-called bordercrossers have genuine asylum claims. The message I take is that the Canadian refugee system is working. It is doing its job,” said Queen’s University refugee law professor Sharry Aiken.
She and others worry just a fraction of the claims have been processed so far.
“The refugee board is underresourced despite the spike in the number of claims. With the U.S. temporary protection of the Haitians in the country ending in January, Canada will see another spike of border-crossers and we need to be ready for it.”
The experts also question the validity of the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. It is based on the assumption the countries have comparable asylum systems and bans refugees from seeking asylum in both.
It doesn’t apply to those who cross into Canada at unmarked points along the border, which critics say encourages asylumseekers to make dangerous treks through no man’s land, mostly in Quebec, B.C. and in Manitoba.
A recent Ipsos poll found many Canadians doubted if border-crossers are legitimate refugees, 67 per cent saying these migrants were trying to bypass the legal immigration process.
A separate poll by Angus Reid found that 57 per cent of respondents disapproved of Ottawa’s handling of the border-crossers, with 53 per cent of the participants in the survey saying Canada was being “too generous” to the asylum-seekers.
In recent months the majority of the border-crossers have been Haitians, who have been staying in the America under a special immigration designation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. But their special status is due to expire by the end of the year and the 58,000 Haitians there must leave the U.S.
Canada’s refugee board has been pushing for additional resources to deal with surge in claimants, a request that so far has been ignored by Ottawa. On Wednesday the board took the unusual step of publicizing the processing data of the “irregular” border claims.
“Whether a refugee is admitted at a border crossing or makes a refugee claim after having entered Canada is irrelevant to whether she is in danger in her country,” said Raoul Boulakia of the Refugee Lawyers Association of Ontario. “It is troubling that public discourse has fallen into discussing these refugee claimants as if they are different. They are refugee claimants. That means the refugee claimant’s case must be adjudicated fairly and impartially, and the question for the refugee board to answer is whether she is at risk in her country.”
Among the 61 people who were deemed inadmissible, 34 have been ordered to be removed from Canada; one was prohibited from seeking asylum; three were allowed to stay in the country; and six withdrew their claims. One person failed to show up for the admissibility hearing. The rest are awaiting a final decision.