Canada’s undefended border a fantasy
We’ve all grown up with the story of living alongside the world’s longest undefended border. Here’s another chapter. For the last few summers, we’ve vacationed on the Vermont side of the frontier with family friends from the U.S., perched a stone’s throw from the international boundary.
I get to jog past American border patrols, bicycle up to checkpoints (passport in hand), and hike alongside unguarded border markings. We browse for books at the Haskell Library that straddles the two countries, where a line along the floor marks the border (no fines for crossing over, just for late returns).
The stories of Stanstead (Canada) and Derby Line (U.S.) — twin towns whose intertwined sewer lines and bloodlines surmount the borderline — have always been too good to be true. For decades, their shared cross-border heritage withstood the transgressions of smugglers sneak- ing in booze, drugs and guns.
Then came 9/11 — and terrorist fears tightened up security while loosening interconnectedness. Today, a line of oversized flower pots has closed off the street alongside the historic library. A border patrol vehicle is a constant presence, with American agents reflexively reminding all bookworms not to worm their way into America.
Where once residents of the U.S. could casually cross the aptly named Canusa St. to use our sidewalk, they must now report to the border post. Homes that once offered the best of both worlds have plunged in price as prospective buyers feared double trouble.
Despite the strain, co-existence continued. This year, the frontier felt different.
Walking unchallenged through a wildlife sanctuary abutting the border — where the white markings of the International Boundary Commission dot the landscape — I couldn’t help thinking of the recent surge in migrants, who take the extra step of crossing onto Canadian soil.
It must be odd for the ever-vigilant American patrols on the borderline, now watching from the sidelines, mindful less of infiltration than exfiltration.
Initially, many Canadians reacted to the news reports with customary smugness and superiority about our humane treatment of downtrodden refugees. But it bears repeating that the sudden increase — Haitians make up an estimated 85 per cent — isn’t as simple as a Donald Trump crackdown versus a Justin Trudeau haven.
In fact, the U.S. still gives sanctuary to Haitians in the wake of a 2010 earthquake, though it is under review. Ottawa quietly resumed deportations in 2014. That means they still have legal status in Trump’s America, but not in Trudeau’s Canada.
That’s not to say Ottawa was wrong to wrap up its program — the earthquake occurred seven years ago — just that it’s wrongheaded to view Canada as the good guy and America as the bad guy. Despite the obvious strains in U.S. immigration policy, its refugee system is still better than most, and Canada has been deporting Haitians while the U.S. hasn’t.
Most have crossed into Quebec, and many will soon be sent to temporary housing in eastern Ontario. They are exploiting a little-understood loophole in our carefully regulated but largely undefended frontier: refugee claimants are turned back at official border points if they already have safe haven in the U.S., yet are allowed to file new claims in Canada if they walk over in between crossings.
It is an axiom of refugee policy that you shouldn’t shuttle from one safe haven to another in search of a better outcome. And as difficult as Haiti can be, economic migrants aren’t bona fide refugees.
“Unless you are being persecuted or fleeing terror or war, you would not qualify as a refugee,” Transport Minister Marc Garneau noted Thursday after the RCMP announced nearly 4,000 crossings so far this month — double the rate for July and five times the pace in June.
The rising tide of refugee claims is a reminder of the sometimes irre- sistible impulse that drives so many migrants to take risks — and try their chances elsewhere. Easy as it is for us here in Canada to criticize others (notably Europeans and Australians) for trying to stem the tide of boat people, the relatively modest surge in arrivals here puts the problem in perspective.
The only consolation for those crossing the Canada-U.S. border is that they are not risking their lives on unseaworthy vessels in the hands of human smugglers. The death rate among migrants crossing the Mediterranean has nearly doubled, with more than 1,500 lives lost so far this year.
Haitian arrivals deserve to be treated with humanity and dignity — and due process. Yet the surge is a recipe for refugee chaos and dashed hopes if it continues unabated.
And a reminder that the fantasy of open borders — the cornerstone of which is compliance — is usually a story without a happy ending. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn