The leader of Quebec says the province can’t handle more people and wants them to go somewhere else
Migrants who cross from New York into Quebec at Roxham Road shouldn’t be seen as a burden, says the head of a non-profit organization in Montreal that helps people who want to claim refugee status.
“What if some of the people coming here to seek asylum already have family here?” What if they can actually speak French? Why wouldn’t you want them to work for us?” Dina Souleiman asked.
She is the leader of the Welcome Collective, which says on its website that “it is a moral imperative for us to go beyond the immediate humanitarian care of the refugee claimants who come to our communities.”
So she is one of the people who are questioning Premier Francois Legault’s letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, in which he asked that all migrants coming in at Roxham Road, an illegal border crossing, be sent to other provinces.
In the letter, Legault says that Quebec’s resources are already being used up and that the province has no more room to take care of undocumented migrants.
But Abdulla Daoud, the head of the Refugee Centre in Montreal, says the problem isn’t the number of migrants, but the time it takes for the federal government to process applications.
He wants the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement to be done away with instead.
The agreement, which has been in place for 20 years, says that both countries are safe for migrants and that refugees must ask for asylum in the first country they reach. That means that Canadian border guards would send back to the U.S. anyone who tried to claim refugee status at an official U.S.-Canada border crossing.
Daoud said that was the only option, or else officials would have to start processing applications and giving out open work permits at the irregular border.
He said that if migrants waiting for landing documents can’t get a place to live, a job, and access to services, they can’t start to do well here.
“If we moved them all over Canada, the problems would still be the same.” No matter where they are, community groups would feel overwhelmed because the bureaucratic system has put them in a very dangerous position “said Daoud.
Niagara region overwhelme
Since July, the federal government has been sending people from Quebec to the Niagara region in Ontario. Last week, a community organizer in that area said that services are getting strained.
The YMCA of Niagara’s general manager of employment and immigrant services, Deanna D’Elia, said the situation was as follows: “a sudden rise in number.” There are a lot of people in Niagara right now.”
The commissioner of community services for the Niagara region, Adrienne Jugley, said that as the year went on, the number of asylum seekers staying in hotels rented by the federal government kept going up.
Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) was renting out more than 600 rooms in the area before Christmas. Jugley said that IRCC told her recently that they plan to add more than 1,500 rooms “very soon.”
That dramatic increase has “certainly raised concerns about our local resources’ ability to respond,” Jugley said last Thursday.
But the government of Quebec says there’s nothing else that can be done there.
In his letter, the prime minister asked that all asylum seekers, “no matter who they are,” be sent to other parts of the country.
He said that the way things are now, they can’t go on.
Legault says that Quebec can’t handle more
Legault says that in 2022, there were about 39,000 illegal entries by people looking for asylum, most of whom came through Roxham Road.
That’s 42% of all the people who asked for asylum in Canada in 2022. In addition to the about 20,000 regular entries, this is a new one.
The letter says, “Quebec has taken in a completely unfair share of Canada’s asylum seekers.” “This can’t keep going on.” “The number of refugees that Quebec can take in has reached its limit.”
The Quebec government says that both the public services in the province and the community groups that help refugee claimants directly have been stretched to their limits.
Legault says that this makes it harder to give asylum seekers decent housing and services because they are “struggling to find adequate housing and are becoming homeless more and more.”
Last week, Christine Fréchette, who is in charge of immigration in Quebec, did say that the province’s message was finally getting through because more people coming into the country through Roxham Road were being sent to Ontario and other provinces.