Asylum seekers cross the border from New York into Canada at Roxham Road on March 18, 2020, in Hemmingford, Quebec.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
Quebec Immigration Minister Jean Boulet set off a political firestorm this week with a tweet calling on Ottawa to “assume its responsibilities” and halt “irregular” border crossings by asylum seekers at Roxham Road in the face of another COVID-19 wave.
Mr. Boulet’s tweet drew an avalanche of criticism because he appeared to be drawing a link between Quebec’s recent surge in coronavirus cases – and the threat of an overwhelmed health care system – and the upswing in irregular asylum claims. This after Ottawa announced in late November that it would no longer turn away asylum seekers at unofficial crossings – as it had been doing since early 2020 as a pandemic control measure.
Asylum seekers are tested for COVID-19 immediately upon their entry into Canada. And though most of them are unvaccinated when they arrive, there have been no reported COVID-19 outbreaks at the temporary shelters that house asylum seekers in Quebec. Mr. Boulet’s tweet appeared to scapegoat refugee claimants at a moment when Quebeckers have grown weary of COVID-19 restrictions and are wondering if the Coalition Avenir Québec government, to which Mr. Boulet belongs, was too slow in recognizing the threat posed by the Omicron variant. That was a tacky gesture on his part.
Mr. Boulet did Canadians a backhanded favour, however, by reminding them that a problem they thought had gone away has returned to haunt the federal government. Between Dec. 3 and Dec. 19 alone, an estimated 2,000 refugee claimants entered Canada from New York State at Roxham Road.
Canadians will remember that, prior to the pandemic, Roxham Road had become synonymous with a loophole in the 2004 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. Under that agreement, asylum seekers who seek to enter Canada from the United States at an official border crossing are systematically turned back and directed to file their refugee claim in that country. But the agreement does not cover asylum seekers who enter Canada at an unofficial crossing, such as Roxham Road.
The 2016 election of Donald Trump led to a surge in Roxham crossings – first among Haitians threatened with deportation by the Republican president, before becoming a preferred point of entry for other refugee claimants from several countries who feared the Trump administration’s immigration policies. In the three years to early 2020, almost 60,000 asylum seekers made a refugee claim in Canada at an unofficial border crossing, the vast majority of them at Roxham Road.
The added strain on the system is still being felt. Almost 14,000 asylum seekers who entered the country at an unofficial crossing before early 2020 are still awaiting a decision on their claim by the Immigration and Refugee Board. About 17,000 have had their applications for refugee status rejected outright, while another 4,000 abandoned or withdrew their claims altogether.
Still, the Trudeau government had been under pressure from refugee advocates to lift the pandemic-control measures that had let it turn away asylum seekers at the Roxham crossing. And with Mr. Trump’s defeat and Democratic President Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House, Ottawa might have hoped that lifting the measures would not lead to a renewed rush of crossings at Roxham. That has not been the case, with reports of as many as 100 daily crossings this month.
Ottawa insists it is working to rejig the Safe Third Country Agreement to plug the loophole that has led to the renewed surge of claimants at Roxham Road. La Presse reported this week that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly recently reached a deal in this regard with her U.S. counterpart, Antony Blinken, though the Trudeau government would not confirm the report.
“As the Prime Minister recently said, we’re currently working with the United States on modernizing the STCA so it can continue to be a compassionate and fair way to handle asylum claims in our two countries,” said Alexander Cohen, a spokesperson for federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser.
So the Trudeau government is caught between its desire to preserve order in the refugee system and calls from advocates who want Canada to withdraw from the Safe Third Country Agreement altogether on the grounds that the United States is not a “safe” place for refugees to file a claim. In 2020, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the agreement violated refugee claimants’ right to liberty and security of the person under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But the Federal Court of Appeal reversed that ruling, and the case, brought by a coalition led by the Canadian Council for Refugees, is now headed for the Supreme Court.
Renegotiating the agreement to fix the loophole might not solve all of the Trudeau government’s problems. But it might be a start. And one that is long overdue.
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