Monday September 24, 2018
ELHAM KHATAMI
A LONG LINE OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WAIT TO ILLEGALLY CROSS THE CANADA/US BORDER NEAR CHAMPLAIN, NEW YORK ON AUGUST 6, 2017. IN RECENT DAYS THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE ILLEGALLY CROSSING THE BORDER HAS GROWN INTO THE HUNDREDS. / AFP PHOTO / GEOFF ROBINS (PHOTO CREDIT SHOULD READ GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
"A very small percentage of them were actually eligible to stay."
Hundreds of migrants who crossed the US border seeking refuge in Canada in the year-and-a-half since Donald Trump became president have been deported, Ottawa’s border security minister said on Sunday.
Tens of thousands of other migrants have left Canada’s border crossing facility after having finished the immigration processes that would ultimately result in their removal, Border Security Minister Bill Blair said.
A surge of more than 32,000 migrants entered Canada between April 2017 and August 2018 to make asylum claims, but Blair said, according to Global News, “a very small percentage of them were actually eligible to stay, and the overwhelming majority of those people have left.”
The Toronto Star reported earlier this month that nearly 400 of the 32,173 individuals who crossed the U.S. border into Canada had been deported, with 146 sent back to the U.S. and the remainder sent to Haiti, Colombia, Turkey, and Iraq.
Global News asked Blair’s office for clarification by what he meant when he said the migrants had “left,” and press secretary Marie-Emmanuelle Cadieux said Blair was referring to people who had left the Lacolle detention facilities in Quebec after having “finished their processes that would ultimately lead to a removal.”
According to Global News, 65 percent of the migrants who sought asylum status in Canada in the past year had “legal status” in the United States before crossing the border — a clear indication that many were fleeing as a result of the Trump administration’s continued crackdown on documented immigrants.
The increase in irregular border crossings into Canada began in 2017, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would no longer provide temporary protected status for individuals from Haiti and El Salvador.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his supporters argue that Canada is following human rights obligations in aiming to accommodate asylum-seekers, but conservatives in the country have referred to the surge in irregular border crossings as a “crisis” that must be stopped.
Conservatives have called for an update to the Safe Third Country agreement between Canada and the U.S, which forbids individuals from seeking asylum when they arrive at an official port-of-entry. For this reason, thousands of asylum seekers have been crossing at irregular points to claim such protective status.
The apparent lack of concern for the lives and safety of migrants appears to be a worldwide trend. Earlier this summer, Italy callously rejected more than 600 migrants, including children and pregnant women, who were stranded on the Mediterranean Sea for days, before they were taken in by Spain. This month, more than 100 migrants fleeing violence in Libya drowned at sea on their way to Europe.