This week, we added one more item to a growing list we call “American Examples Canada Should Not Emulate.” The latest cautionary tale is immigration.
The United States is a country with relatively low legal immigration and relatively high illegal immigration. The former helps to drive the latter. It’s why the U.S. has 11-million residents who are not legally allowed to be there, living to some extent in the shadows. The only thing an increasingly radicalized right and left can agree on is that this is crazy. Other than that, the American immigration discussion has gone completely off the rails.
Canada, in contrast, is a country with relatively high legal immigration – per capita, it’s three times the U.S. rate – and relatively little illegal immigration. Future citizens come to Canada in a lawful, orderly manner. Almost all are selected by Canada from overseas.
Canadians should want to keep this system. It likely explains why Canadian politics does not – yet – feature a populist anti-immigrant movement.
Which brings us to Roxham Road, Canada’s own budding border issue.
In the first five months of 2017, there were more than 9,000 unauthorized border crossings into Canada, most at a site on the Quebec-New York border where traversing the frontier is as easy as stepping out of a taxi. So far, the numbers haven’t grown as big as feared, but even this small surge in illegal border crossers is causing shelters to overflow and political tensions to grow. The Americans have spent years unable to squarely face their immigration system’s problems and unwilling to talk honestly about causes or solutions. Canada can’t follow that approach.
So let’s talk honestly about what’s going on, and why.
Welcome to Canada? Read the fine print: In early 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau memorably tweeted: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”
His government has spent the last year-and-a-half quietly trying to walk those words back.
Yes, Canada will welcome anyone who shows up at the border – if they meet international law’s definition of a refugee and are fleeing persecution. They’ll receive protection, permanent residency and even citizenship. But that welcome only applies to refugees. Anyone else is supposed to enter the immigration stream, and get in a very long line. As government emissaries have reminded audiences from Miami to Nigeria, if you show up at the border and you are not a refugee, you will be sent home.
In theory, that’s how it works. In practice? Not so much.
Crossing the border illegally is rewarded: Canada may eventually deport someone who isn’t a refugee, but determining who is and who isn’t takes a very long time. The current average wait time for a refugee claim to be decided is 32 months. And negative decisions can of course be appealed.
That may explain why there has been a sudden surge in the number of people from Nigeria who appear to have bought plane tickets to New York City for the purpose of traveling to Roxham Road. If they cross at an official port of entry, they will be sent back, as part of the Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S. But if they cross illegally and, once in Canada, present themselves to the police, they will be admitted to this country, provided with social services and, eventually, the right to work, all pending a status determination in some distant future.
There is a solution: The Liberal government can fix this, in a way that offers protection to refugees, maintains the integrity of the immigration system and meets Canada’s obligations under the Charter of Rights and international law.
By taking years to rule on refugee claims, Canada is punishing genuine refugees while encouraging non-refugees to try entering through the wrong door. To make things right, a full adjudication of every case in Canada must happen in a matter of months. Keep the system as is, just speed it up.
The only way to do that is for Ottawa to hire a lot more refugee adjudicators and other officials. Yes, this will cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. On a federal budget of more than $300-billion a year, it’s a small investment in maintaining law, order and social peace. There is widespread support for the status quo of a Canadian immigration system that works. Let’s keep it working.