We were born in Quebec. This is the greatest chance of our life.
They were born in countries ravaged by armed conflicts, humanitarian crises or climate change caused in large part by developed countries.
Reverse the roles for a moment. Imagine if we were in their shoes. If, instead of winning the grand prize of citizenship, we walked the Roxham Road in the legitimate quest for a better life for our family.
A little compassion would be appreciated, would it?
But to read the comments of the general public, we can measure the extent to which Quebecers are turned against the flow of irregular immigration.
We must “stop drowning Quebec with fake refugees,” writes a reader. “I’m tired of seeing them arrive like visitors who settle in our yard,” adds another.
A third found the solution: “Why don’t we pay for plane tickets to send them back to their point of origin? It will always cost less than the current hosting and management cost. »
Perhaps he was inspired by the United Kingdom, which wants to “export” its irregular migrants to Rwanda, more and more of them crossing the Channel, despite promises to tighten immigration since Brexit?
Let’s be realistic: we cannot set up roadblocks to stem the flow of refugees that is surging across the world.
In 2022, the number of migrants reached a peak of 100 million people, with the wars in Ukraine and Syria, the drought in Africa, the floods in Pakistan… and we are not talking about Haiti and Venezuela.
It’s only a beginning. Rising sea levels will endanger 900 million people, warned the UN Secretary General on Wednesday, speaking of an exodus “on a biblical scale”.
Long spared because of its remoteness, Canada is now overtaken by the immense challenge of migration.
No matter how close Roxham Road is, the migrants will simply go elsewhere. Playing cat and mouse along our 8900 kilometer border with the United States would be as ridiculous as it is dangerous.
That said, it must be admitted that the burden for Quebec is disproportionate, since 42% of asylum seekers across the country go through Roxham Road, almost double the demographic weight of the province (22%).
Housing is lacking. Community organizations are cracking up. Quick, we need a valve.
In the short term, the federal government is therefore doing useful work by redirecting most asylum seekers to Ontario: out of 380 people who arrived via Roxham last weekend, only eight remained in Quebec.
But when distributing the migrants, we must still be careful not to break their ties with their relatives in Quebec, which is the best guarantee of integration. And you have to realize that the housing crisis is raging across the country.
In the longer term, we will inevitably have to increase our accommodation capacity for migrants, if we don’t want to end up with families sleeping under bridges, as in Paris.
It will also be necessary to reduce the processing times for completely unreasonable files. By delaying in providing work permits to asylum seekers, Ottawa keeps them in precarious conditions. By dragging on their refugee status, the feds hold their lives on a tightrope.
These people deserve to be treated with dignity. That we don’t just see them as a burden, but as people who can contribute positively to society. We saw it with all these guardian angels during the pandemic. We have seen it with all the refugees, like the writer Kim Thúy, who enrich our culture.
So please, let’s stop adding fuel to the fire like some politicians who feed the fear of the other with a nationalism of withdrawal. Before climbing into the curtains, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of migrants, for a moment.