For many crossin! to Canada, bad news

No guarantees for surge of migrants leaving U.S.

MONTREAL — Men and women with furrowed brows sat in pews alongside their children at a Montreal church as volunteers explained whattoexpectnowthattheyhave crossed into Canada from the United States seeking asylum.

Theywouldreceivetemporary housing stipends and access to medical care. Their kids could go to school. The volunteers handed out small maple-leaf flags.

“I like Canada very much,” 26-year-old Marline Dorisma of

Haiti said later. “There are lots of opportunities here.”

What they did not get were any assurances that they will be allowed to stay. In fact, many will eventually be told to go back home.

The migrants are part of a recent surge of people crossing over from the United States, including some 4,000 in just the last two weeks, that is straining Canada’s immigration system to the point where officials turned a domed stadium into a makeshift shelter.

Many said they left fearing deportation due to increased immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump and believing Canada would automatically give them residence, only to experience a rude awakening upon arrival. It’s a widely held misbelief that Transport Minister Marc Garneau sought to dispel during a recent visit to the international border near Quebec, where migrants have been crossing over from northern New York.

“Unless you are being persecuted or fleeing terror or war, you would not qualify as a refugee,” Garneau said, “and it’s important to combat that misinformation that is out there.”

Emmanuel Dubourg, a Haitian-born member of Canada’s Parliament, said he would speak with members of the Haitian diaspora in Miami this week to warn that economic migrants can’t get asylum.

“A lot of them sell everything and try to come to here but in six months, a year after that, a lot of them will be deported out of the country,” Dubourg said. “It will be really sad for them in six months to be told you have to go back. They have to be aware of that.”

Like in the United States, rules in Canada allow for asylum for people who can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in their homeland based on race, religion, political opinion, nationality or membership in a group like the LBGT community.