Migrant pipeline to Canada
City buying asylum seekers bus tix to Plattsburgh near border
After stopovers in a heavily strained New York City, some migrants are forsaking the American Dream and heading northward to a secluded crossing at Canada’s border.
Trips to Roxham Road, a 5-mile path marked by a makeshift Canadian customs barn and long used by asylum seekers seeking irregular entry into the Great White North, appear to be growing in frequency this winter.
The crossings have emerged as a new focus in a wave of migration unleashed by political upheaval in Venezuela and Nicaragua, irking some Canadians even as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government seeks to open its arms to refugees.
New York City has taken in some 45,000 migrants in the last 10 months, according to official estimates, and continues to support nearly 30,000. But the city, which has struggled at times to shelter the arrivals, has also helped some migrants leave.
City contractors have purchased bus tickets for asylum seekers headed to upstate Plattsburgh, a 20-mile taxi ride from
Roxham Road. The crossing connects the quiet border towns of Champlain, N.Y., and St. Bernard de Lacolle, Quebec.
City Hall officials say the trips to Plattsburgh are no different from rides provided to other cities, and bristle at comparisons with the harsh charter-bus program that Texas has deployed to bring thousands of migrants — some against their will — to New York, Washington and Chicago.
Anne Williams-Isom, New York’s deputy mayor for health and human services, said the city will help asylum seekers who seek to reach loved ones in other places, but has never pushed anyone to leave the five boroughs.
The treks from New York north toward the border have not produced the type of political mudslinging that Mayor Adams and Gov. Gregg Abbott of Texas engaged in over the summer. Trudeau, a third-term liberal, has presided over historically high levels of immigration to Canada.
In a statement, Trudeau’s immigration office said Canada is working with New York officials to ensure the “safe and humane treatment of asylum seekers,” and rejected the notion that migrants have been pushed to go to Plattsburgh or bused directly to the border.
“Canada remains firmly committed to aiding those genuinely in need of help and protection,” Bahoz Dara Aziz, a spokeswoman for the immigration office, said in the statement, while urging arrivals to use official points of entry.
Still, the Roxham trend has ruffled some Canadian feathers. In the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, a conservative columnist declared that New York’s role in the illicit crossings is “shameful.”
“Justin Trudeau imported the issue of illegal immigration into Canada from the United States,” wrote the columnist, Brian Lilley. “Now he has a problem that is getting bigger thanks to his political ally, Eric Adams, handing out bus tickets.”
Some Canadian officials have said the surge in arrivals at Roxham Road demands that the entry point be shut permanently.
“We are surprised, to say the least, by New York’s choice to pay for transport for migrants to leave the city,” said a statement from the office of Christine Fréchette,
Quebec’s conservative immigration minister. “We call on the Canadian government to close this irregular crossing.”
Fréchette’s spokesman, Alexandre Lahaie, called for federal Canadian funds to support Quebec as it takes in more migrants. Adams has made similar pleas to Washington in recent months.
About two-in-three asylum seekers who arrived in Quebec last year came through Roxham Road, according to the province’s government. The number of Roxham arrivals soared in the final months of 2022 — 4,748 crossings were reported in December, 71% more than in December 2021.
In Champlain, an Adirondacks village of some 6,000 people, the trend has caused occasional congestion on town roads, but few other effects, said Thomas Trombley, the town supervisor.
“There’s no town resources being used,” Trombley said by phone Thursday. “This is not a town issue. This is a federal issue.”
In New York City, Adams has sought to draw a contrast between the migrants’ city-supported movements north and the path that some took into Manhattan.
“There’s no role that the city is playing to tell migrants to go to Canada,” Adams said at a Tuesday news conference.
“Migrants were forced to come to New York — many of them did not want to come,” the mayor said. “We are speaking to people, interacting with them and saying: ‘What are your needs?’ ”
Canada often provides work permits to asylum seekers more quickly than the U.S., which has a severely backed up system for doling out the papers.
Asylum seekers headed northward may not initially find the frosty frontier much friendlier than the U.S. Canadian cops are stationed at Roxham Road, and typically apprehend arrivals.
Still, Jacqueline Bonisteel, a partner at the Corporate Immigration Law Firm in Canada, said in an interview that asylum seekers who cross at Roxham Road will be allowed to go through Canada’s asylum process.
“Even though Roxham Road isn’t a legal port of entry into Canada, the provisions of our refugee law apply,” Bonisteel said. “It is not not illegal for an asylum seeker to enter Canada for the purpose of making a refugee claim.”