I am heartbroken: the Canadian government announced without any warning the closure to asylum seekers of Roxham Road, through which I passed, as well as the entire Canadian border. I imagine the hundreds or even thousands of migrants who will suffer from this decision in the coming months.
Much has been said about us asylum seekers, but very little about why so many people like me feel unsafe in the United States. In Haiti, I had been a nurse for years in a large university hospital. I had never thought of leaving my country, but I experienced attacks and great danger that turned my life upside down. I had to flee to the United States in September 2020.
Reading today all that is written about the closure of Roxham Road, I understand that for many Canadians it is easy to see immigrants as invaders, but much more difficult to understand what is behind the choice we have made to migrate.
I spent a year and two months in the United States as an asylum seeker, and I suffered a lot. I have never been entitled to a work permit or a penny of financial aid from the American government. What little savings I had when I arrived melted like snow in the sun and within weeks we had no money to eat or to send our child to school.
My days in the United States, my family of four crammed into a tiny room, consisted of getting up, going to bed, and waiting for someone to come by to feed us. And we were lucky: no one in the family got sick. Because there, asylum seekers have no right to health care. I know many sick people who have wasted away without being able to see a doctor or take medication for their diabetes or other much worse health problems.
When you apply for asylum in the United States, you know that you will live in this poverty for many years. Acquaintance sought asylum in US in 2013; he died in 2022, nine years later, still awaiting his asylum hearing and status. The only way out is to do odd jobs on the black market: you are made to work 10 or 12 hours a day, paying you much less than minimum wage, in the worst jobs. Living without money and without the right to work is real torture: we don’t want to work illegally, but we have no choice but to do so to feed our children.
I left the United States with my family to enter Canada in December 2021 via Roxham Road because it was my only option. If I had entered through the official border post at Lacolle, I would have been turned back to the United States. I never wanted to commit a crime, an offense or a negative act for Canadian society: I simply needed security for myself, my husband and my children.
Today, I gave birth, I have a young child and I volunteer in community organizations in Montreal. My husband works in the essential services sector. My child goes to school. I have my beneficiary attendant diploma, and we do our best to contribute to Canadian society. I am ready to wait patiently for the government’s decision on my status, and I am grateful for the incredible welcome Canadians have given me in every way.
The closure of Roxham Road, we feel it as a blow for all migrants. Anyone in Haiti, Central America and elsewhere does not yet know how extremely difficult it is to seek asylum in the United States. People will try to cross by other routes, because we have no choice but to try to survive for our children. People will die in the woods and despair of being turned back to the United States. If it is a safe country, why do so many people like me still cross the border into Canada?
It’s because we suffer too much in this unequal country, and coming to Canada allows us to save our lives. Now that I’m here, and even if it’s not easy every day, I can say that it’s the first country where I felt welcomed and where I was able to start contributing in my turn to the Company.
For all migrants, I pray that Canada will once again allow people like me to have access to the asylum process.