Canada should prepare for more migration

WASHINGTON — Warmer weather and fading COVID-19 fears have immigration experts warning of more irregular efforts to cross the CanadaU.S. border in both directions.

While Canada has for years been a destination for desperate asylum seekers who avoid official entry points in hopes of staking a refugee claim, anecdotal evidence suggests U.S. border guards are encountering more people headed the other way.

The latest incident came late last month, when six Indian nationals were rescued from a sinking boat in the St. Regis River, which runs through Akwesasne Mohawk territory that extends into southeastern Ontario, southwestern Quebec and northern New York state.

A seventh person, spotted leaving the vessel and wading ashore, was later identified as a U.S. citizen.

Brian Lazore is now in custody in what U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are characterizing as a human smuggling incident.

In January, a family of four died of exposure in blizzard-like conditions in Manitoba, just metres from the Canada-U.S. border, as part of what officials in Minnesota have alleged was a human smuggling effort.

Border guards and experts alike say that after nearly two years of rigid travel restrictions and strict healthpolicy enforcement, illegal and irregular migration is beginning to ramp back up towards pre-pandemic levels.

Border authorities in Maine have also recently encountered carloads of illegal migrants, including five Romanian nationals who entered last month from Canada and had no legal right to be in the U.S.

Customs and Border Protection did not respond to media questions about two other April incidents involving a total of 22 people, including 14 from Mexico and seven from Ecuador, including which direction they were travelling when they were stopped.

Canada eased its own pandemicrelated immigration restrictions late last year, and the number of asylum seekers at the border has increased in turn since then.

Police intercepted more than 7,000 people entering Canada between official entry points in December 2021 and January and February of this year, almost entirely in Quebec — a frigid stretch when irregular migration is normally at its lowest ebb. Prior to the pandemic in 2019, RCMP reported only about 2,700 interceptions for those same months.

“We weren’t particularly surprised with those numbers, because we had heard lots of stories,” said Frances Ravensbergen, a resident of Hemmingford who helps to co-ordinate the efforts of Bridges Not Borders, an outreach group for migrants in the area.

Experts say the quieter days brought on by COVID-19 are likely at an end.

“We’ll see a return to pre-pandemic levels as travel restrictions ease across the globe,” said Sharry Aiken, a law professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., who specializes in immigration policy.