Canada’s immigration minister has said “not everyone is welcome” in the country as officials brace for an increase of migrants when Donald Trump returns to the White House with a pledge to carry out mass deportations.
The minister’s warning, seven years after Justin Trudeau promised that “Canadians will welcome” asylum seekers, reflects a stark shift in tone amid waning support for immigration and refugee resettlement in the country, according to migration experts.
Trump has pledged to enact the country’s largest mass deportation when he takes office in January. The senior official helping to oversee the policy, Tom Homan, said Monday the incoming administration will target those living illegally in the US who they consider a public safety threat.
But the effect of these policies is widely expected to prompt many people in the US without documentation to flee north and cross unpatrolled areas of the 5,500-mile border.
Speaking to the Globe and Mail, immigration minister Marc Miller said his government would “always be acting in the national interest … to make sure that our borders are secure, that people that are coming to Canada do so in a regular pathway, and the reality that not everyone is welcome here”.
During Trump’s first term in office, tens of thousands of Haitians fled to Canada after the president ended temporary protected status for the group.
At the time, Trudeau posted on social media: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”
Canada’s federal police say they have plans to deal with a fresh increase in crossings that have been “several months” in the making. Deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland said her government “absolutely recognize[d] the importance to border security and of controlling our own border, of controlling who comes into Canada and who doesn’t”.
But migration experts said the government’s tough messaging on border security in advance of a possible humanitarian crisis reflects an abdication of its moral responsibilities and of the refugee convention.
“Canada’s first and only response to what might be persecution in a neighbouring country is, ‘How do we prevent people from escaping to our country?’ It’s certainly familiar, unsurprising and disappointing,” said Audrey Macklin, a law professor at the University of Toronto.
Under the refugee convention, a country cannot turn away an asylum seekers if they they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin. Until 2005, people attempting to claim asylum could make claims at ports of entry, but a US-Canada agreement pushed by Canada made it more difficult. That pact, the Safe Third Country Agreement, allowed Canada could send claimants back to the US and vice versa.
“The idea was, you’re not sending them back to the country where they fear persecution. You’re just sending them to the United States. Baked into agreement is idea United States is a safe country for people to seek and obtain refugee protection,” said Macklin, who previously served as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Recent changes to the agreement have made it harder to make asylum claims when travelling from the United States to Canada, meaning families will take increasingly dangerous routes – an “immense job stimulus program for smugglers”, said Macklin.
Under the current rule, a person can make an asylum claim if they remain undetected in Canada for 14 days.
“Canada and the United States have created a market for smugglers by making it impossible to ask for refugee protection at a port of entry, because if they could, if people could do that, they wouldn’t need they wouldn’t use smugglers,” said Macklin. “And now people are going to have to pay the smuggler to hide them for 14 days.”
Macklin said Canada should revisit the agreement if it wants to deter people from taking dangerous journeys north.
“If anybody actually cared about harm to asylum seekers, if anybody was absolutely concerned about their wellbeing, they wouldn’t force them into a system where they’re required to use the services of smugglers or traffickers take risky routes that risk them being injured, freezing limbs and other forms of danger, they would see the the Safe Third Country Agreement is designed to inflict harm,” she said.
“What we’re seeing now is the entirely predictable outcome of a deliberate, intentional policy that Canada pursued for decades.”
