UN urges Canada to take in more vulnerable migrants

Women and girls as well as members of the LGBTQ community need to be resettled

OTTAWA — The United Nations is urging Canada to help ease Mexico’s refugee burden by helping resettle some of the most vulnerable of its new arrivals, including women, children and members of the LGBTQ community.

Mexico is feeling the squeeze from an unprecedented exodus of people fleeing Central American countries, and some of the worst violence from nations not actually at war is forcing families northward.

“Our pitch to Canada is to do more,” said Mark Manly, the Mexico representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Manly was in Ottawa earlier this month for meetings with the federal government to look for ways for Canada to help resettle more of the migrants that have arrived in Mexico.

The request comes as the United States takes a harder line on its Mexican border, with President Donald Trump branding the caravans of migrants as being laced with violent criminals bent on destabilizing his country.

Canada, Mexico and the U.S. are pushing to have their new version of the North American Free Trade Agreement ratified as soon as Vice-President Mike Pence visits Ottawa this week to give that a renewed push.

Asylum seekers reaching Mexico from Honduras, El Salvador and Venezuela caused a 103 per cent spike in claims in 2018 over the previous years, from almost 15,000 to about 30,000, says the UNHCR.

Manly said that many migrants have good settlement prospects in Mexico because of its growing economy and need for foreign labour, but women and girls fleeing gang violence as well as members of the LGBTQ community need to be resettled elsewhere because they are not safe.

The UNHCR wants to “take the pressure off Mexican authorities to take care of this kind of profile and resettle them to Canada,” Manly said.

Criminal gangs are flourishing in Central America, he said.

They extort money from the noncriminals, kill other gang members and are constantly recruiting adolescent boys and girls.

“Anyone who gets in the way is at severe risk, so entire families leave,” Manly explained. “That explains the demographic change.”

Canada is already “doing a few things in terms of technical support for the Mexican asylum system, resettlement of people who face extreme protection risks in the region,” he added, including helping resettle LGBTQ applicants.

“These are countries that are close by; they are countries with which Canada has close ties, Mexico being the most important of them.”

A spokesperson for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen was unable to provide statistics of how many Mexican asylum seekers Canada has received recently.

But Lise Jolicoeur said Canada is a partner in the Rainbow Refugee Society, which helps sponsor LGBTQ2 refugees from around the world.