Asylum seekers flee U.S. for Quebec, fearing temporary permits will expire

OTTAWA — New waves of asylum seekers are sweeping into Canada from the United States, forcing authorities in the province of Quebec to set up a network of temporary shelters, including a makeshift center at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.

As many as 150 migrants a day are making “irregular” border crossings from northern New York state into Quebec near the border station at Lacolle, and 70 percent of them are Haitians, fearful that the Trump administration will soon end their special temporary status in the country.

Quebec Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil told a news conference Thursday that the province can handle the surge in migrants, but she asked the Canadian government to speed the processing of initial asylum claims for new arrivals and allow the migrants to leave Quebec if they wish to ultimately settle in other parts of the country.

In addition to the shelter at the stadium, where up to 300 migrants can sleep on cots in the concessions area, Quebec is putting them up at student dormitories, shuttered nursing homes and hotels. In the first six months of this year, 6,500 asylum seekers arrived in Quebec across land and other borders, accounting for 35 percent of Canada’s total, Ms. Weil said.

Jean-Pierre Fortin, head of the union representing Canada’s border agents, called the influx “a national crisis.”

The arrivals began shortly after Donald Trump was elected president and initially consisted of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and countries named in Mr. Trump’s temporary ban on travelers from several Muslim-majority states. Most have been crossing into Quebec and Manitoba, where geography makes the trek across the border relatively easy, except in winter.

The increase in Haitian arrivals has been recent. One Haitian woman interviewed Wednesday by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. after crossing over into Canada said she left the United States because she was scared. “So we checked online and we saw that Canada was going to welcome Haitians, and that’s why we come here,” she said.

“There’s been a lot of fear in the community as to what happens if Temporary Protected Status ends in January,” said Adonia Simpson, a lawyer and director of the family defense program at Americans for Immigrant Justice in Miami, which has a large Haitian community.

An estimated 58,000 Haitians have been granted Temporary Protected Status to remain in the United States since the 2010 earthquake in the Caribbean island nation. That status was renewed on an 18-month basis until May, when then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announced a six-month extension and warned the migrants that it could be the last one. The current extension ends on Jan. 22.