Let’s get things straight. If you or I were Haitians, Cubans, Guatemalans, among many others, we would move heaven and earth, sell all our possessions, go into debt up to our eyes to arrive in United States territory, take the road that leads to Roxham Road and try our chance to have a vastly better life for ourselves and our children in Canada.
Information circulates quickly in immigration circles in the countries of the South. Six years ago this month, Justin Trudeau tweeted, “To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, know that Canada will welcome you.” The English version collected no less than 600,000 “likes”.
Initially, panicked by the influx of applications, Ottawa announced that more than 90% of these applicants would end up being sent back because they did not meet the asylum criteria. More recently, a new report showed 50% refusal. However, we know that tens of thousands of people disappear into the wild and prefer to live without papers in Quebec and Canada rather than being returned to their country of origin. You and I would do the same. Especially since Ottawa plans to regularize the situation of half a million of them shortly.
See, your (our) chances of success have gone from 10% to 50% to potentially 100%. Coming to Roxham Road is the right choice.
The host society must set its conditions at the point of entry. They must be precise, understandable, predictable. The social contract between us and the future members of our society is embodied there, in the decision of the migrant to accept these conditions. Once this step has been taken, our attitude must be one of total openness.
That is why, Minister, I supported the thousands of Haitian earthquake refugees that Ottawa threatened to deport; leader of the PQ, I denounced during the 2018 campaign the absurd project of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) to deport immigrants who, three years after their arrival, fail values or French tests ; commentator, I have demanded that all refugees and asylum seekers who have supported Quebec’s health and economy during the pandemic, without exception, be granted a Quebec selection certificate, which the CAQ has shamefully refused to do .
I also insisted that knowledge of French at the point of entry be essential for immigrants in good standing, but that the level of French be modulated according to the job targeted. (Heartbreaking examples of rigidity are well exposed in the documentary Essentialson Télé-Québec.)
Canada’s refusal to act
What to do with Roxham? We know exactly what, and from the beginning. Ottawa had only to use the clause that suspends our agreement with the United States to ensure that all asylum seekers present themselves at a regular border crossing. If he did not wish to offend the Americans, it would have been enough to modify the federal law on immigration to apply to Roxham the terms of the agreement. Therefore, immediately, the officers could have refused on the spot the asylum applications they considered unfounded, so half.
We are told that the renegotiation of the agreement with the United States will not be finalized when Joe Biden comes in March and that we will have to wait for the American Congress to adopt a legislative change, which is these days as easy as teaching synchronized swimming to a swarm of black flies.
Quebec’s new immigration minister, Christine Fréchette, said, basta ! (a word borrowed from Italian which means “enough!”). Yes, but how will this injunction translate into reality, when the flow, which has increased from 16,000 in 2017 to 39,000 last year, will reach 50,000 this year, 60,000 next year?
The options
I know of only two options capable of forcing Ottawa’s hand. Some propose to send the Sûreté du Québec. It could not block the border, which is federal, but the road, under Quebec jurisdiction, behind the federal reception facilities. This would mean that federal agents would continue to receive migrants, but could not get them out of their enclave, forcing Ottawa to send candidates back to Lacolle. I am opposed to this hypothesis, agonizing for migrants and politically untenable, because — visualize a barricade of Quebec police blocking access to federal officials — at an enormous reputational cost.
The other solution is to ask Ottawa to leave Quebec its fair share of these refugees, ie 20%, our democratic weight, and to distribute the others to the rest of the country. Otherwise, Quebec will do it for him. In fact, Ottawa started making this move last year, for about 10% of applicants. But he does it randomly and frankly indelicate, disembarking at the homes of migrants without warning to take them to Ontario. I suggest that this process be transparent and predictable.
Quebec would take care of French-speakers and people who have immediate family in Quebec as soon as they arrive, therefore those for whom integration success is the highest, but would take the others back to Ottawa or to a place that we can find on a daily basis. would be indicated. The second largest contingent is made up of Nigerians, Anglophones, who will find in the ROC better conditions for integration. If there are other realistic options, I’m all ears.
A requirement for lucidity
This solution would not dry up the flow. Only the aforementioned federal legal measures would make it possible to reduce it by half. Quebec apparently received 10,000 of these irregular applicants last year, four times less. This number could double in a few years, but at least it would be manageable.
Finally, there is the question of knowing if, in the event of suspension of the Canada-US agreement by Ottawa, the candidates knowing that half of them will be prohibited from entering will not cross the border elsewhere. A number, yes. The damage is done, the smugglers are installed, they have an interest in making it last. However, the number would be significantly reduced, as the risk would be much greater.
I know that readers will consider that these hypotheses should not be evoked. They are right to believe that each of these migrants has a story, a hope, an irreducible human value. But since borders exist, they must be managed. Which means saying sometimes yes, sometimes no. And these responses have lifelong consequences for each migrant.
Clarity demands that these questions be asked, since Justin Trudeau has refused to act for six years. I believe that Quebec must say basta ! to the untenable Canadian status quo at Roxham and take steps to effect real change. I consider it just as essential that once among us, each of the people we welcome immediately obtain this first passport for the dignity that is the right to work — and for agricultural workers, that they can change employers their will. Let them then be offered a rapid gateway to permanent resident status without subjecting them to the arrogance of examining their asylum application, refusing half of them, pushing them into hiding, then regularizing them in a amnesty.
In short, let’s be firm and rigorous at the point of entry, and then do everything we can to ensure that those who choose us and whom we have chosen obtain the right, and develop the desire, to become fully Quebecers.
[email protected]; blog: jflisee.org