Three eras, three ways of experiencing the border. The duty spoke to asylum seekers affected differently by Canadian border policies before, during and after Roxham Road. Last of a series of three texts.T
“Having to go from country to country like that is not a life,” says the man whose image is a little blurry at first on the video call. He and his wife were days away from being ready to complete their journey, he continues once the internet connection stabilizes. After nine months on the road to Montreal, Pierre had finally amassed enough money, working in Indiana, to pay for the end of the long journey.
This Haitian of origin was planning to seek asylum in Canada via Roxham Road, but since new restrictions are in place at the border, he is “very worried”. His only hope stems from the fact that a family member already lives in Canada, one of the exceptions still applicable to the Safe Third Country Agreement.
Ottawa and Washington indeed agreed last March to apply this agreement to their entire land border, which means that a migrant intercepted at any place along the border (including Roxham Road) will be turned back in the USA.
Pierre asked that his last name be withheld for fear of harming his immigration file when – and if – he manages to come to Canada, he says.
Like thousands of other Haitians, he began his journey in search of safety through Chile. This slender South American country granted him a work visa. There, he trained in car mechanics, got a license to drive forklifts and learned Spanish, which makes him trilingual. “I had legalized all my papers,” he repeated several times during the interview — that is to say, he had had his titles recognized in order to be able to use them in Montreal.
He met his wife in Chile, but she had no permanent status there. “My wife could not apply for a visa for Canada and travel by plane,” he explains. They could thus have applied for asylum upon landing at the airport, as 11,670 people did in Quebec in 2022.
A dangerous journey
It is therefore by the longest route – and the most risky – that they have passed, crossing nine countries, including Colombia and the Darien plug, which separates it from Panama. “People stole almost everything we had there, even our money,” Pierre said.
“When we arrived in the United States, it was really complicated. My goal was to return to Canada. I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have a job,” explains Pierre first. They joined a friend in Florida, who lent them some money, and then went to Indiana. In a neighborhood north of Indianapolis, he found a little job to pay off that debt and pay for bus tickets to Plattsburgh.
“And there, I learned that the border was closed. Oh my God ! My wife cried a lot,” says Pierre. He is very worried about her, as she is nearly six months pregnant and still has not received medical attention. No ultrasound checked the baby’s state of health, he said.
At the time, he had no precise information on the changes at the border. Today, he still hopes to benefit from one of the rare exceptions to the Safe Third Country Agreement, which does not apply if a person already has a family member in Canada.
It is now a race for original documents, including his Haitian birth certificate, which has begun to prove this relationship. “Even for those people who are legitimately among the exceptions [comme Pierre], finding documents to demonstrate it 100% is not easy. Then finding people to pick up their documents is really not easy,” says Frantz André, of the Action Committee for People Without Status.
Several government institutions in Haiti are simply inaccessible, such as the National Archives and the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police.
A country in crisis
Haiti not only experiences severe shortages of fuel, but also of drinking water and food. And gang-related violence has worsened since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
The Canadian government recognizes this political, security and humanitarian crisis by providing military aid in particular. Last month, the United Nations and its partners sounded the alarm about the humanitarian situation in the country, speaking of an “unprecedented” deterioration.
Since the acceleration of irregular arrivals of asylum seekers at the Canadian border in 2017, Haiti has been the first country of origin for the latter. Their acceptance rate is around 30%, lower than that of Roxham applicants in general.
These thousands of rejected Haitians find themselves suspended in the territory. On the one hand, Canada rejected their asylum request; on the other, it does not send them back to their country of origin for security reasons. This measure, called administrative stay of removals, applies to territories such as Syria, Libya, Yemen, South Sudan, Palestine and Venezuela, where the current situation endangers the lives of the population in their together.
On the one hand, many have demanded, in particular through a petition to the House of Commons, the creation of humanitarian visas for Haitians. On the other hand, in exchange for the new agreement with Washington, Ottawa agreed to welcome an additional 15,000 immigrants “from the western hemisphere” per year “for humanitarian reasons”, but very few details have been announced until now. now.
“I’m waiting,” said Pierre again. But after all these efforts and sacrifices, there is no longer any question of turning back.