Americans must have a good laugh in their beards. An article from New York Post has just revealed how the City of New York and the American Military Guard are distributing free bus tickets to migrants wishing to move to a “safer” destination, including Canada, this oh so convenient sieve. These new revelations are added to an already robust plea in favor of an urgent revision of the Agreement on safe third countries (ETPS), the obsolescence of which reflects on Quebec.
The article by colleagues from New York Post is a real little gem worth seeing: reporters have unveiled a system developed by New York authorities, supported by migrant aid organizations, which funds the departure of some 100 people a day to Plattsburgh. From there, minivans take asylum seekers to other destinations, including Roxham Road, some 44 kilometers away. “It’s very difficult to get papers in the United States,” said Manuel Rodon, 26, a Venezuelan who ended up in a homeless shelter in New York and who considers the United States unsafe. ” I need to work. I’m going to Canada. »
The report follows the migrants to Roxham Road, where, as we know, RCMP officers greet passers-by without turning them back. We know the chorus: in 2022, some 39,000 people have crossed the Canadian border there, dreaming of a better place. Roxham Road has become a handy bypass, and authorities of all kinds seem to be at a loss for how to deconstruct what has become an unofficial system alongside a flawed official system. New York Mayor Eric Adams has confirmed that he is indeed helping migrants move to other destinations. The irony is superb: the American city receives tens of thousands of migrants displaced by bus, in the same way, from Texas. Itself overwhelmed and grappling with a problem of availability of resources and means, it found no better remedy than to transfer the problem — by bus financed at high cost by public funds — elsewhere.
And elsewhere, it’s us. Quebec’s Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette, vociferously vociferates that “Roxham Road, basta ! », the problem remains intact, and to be honest, it is only getting worse. Although Canada is the official holder of powers related to the border, it is Quebec that suffers. This problem is currently the subject of tough negotiations between Canada and the United States, which claim to want to review the ETPS, which has become completely obsolete.
The renegotiation of the ETPS is dragging on, which has resulted in the rejection of asylum seekers at the gates of Canada. This agreement, which has been in effect since 2004, allows Canada to refuse requests made at an official Canada-US border crossing, and to return refugees to the United States, considered a “safe” country. Roxham Road has since become a very convenient ‘unofficial’ road, where no one is turned away. However, the journey there is not without danger, as the tragic death earlier this year of Fritznel Richard, a 44-year-old asylum seeker of Haitian origin, showed. The man, who was trying to reach his wife and children in the United States, died of hypothermia in the middle of a blizzard.
The Government of Quebec rightly deplores the untenable nature of the situation, which causes it significant financial pressure, not to mention the administrative chaos into which migrants plunge upon their arrival. They have to wait months before finding out if they are received by Canada, which puts them in a wait that forces inaction — and this, in the midst of a labor shortage. The organizations that help them recently cried out for help, and received one-time support of $3.5 million. But we already know that it will not be enough to heal the gaping wound and that the important thing is rather to solve the problem at the source by regularizing the political situation.
All eyes are on US President Joe Biden, whose visit to Canada is expected in March. Negotiations have been underway for months on the overhaul of the ETPS, but already, the signals sent by Prime Minister Trudeau’s team suggest that March is perhaps too early for us to pick an outcome to this dead end. Canada has a golden opportunity here to check whether it has any weight in the revision of the ETPS: with New York financing the transshipment of hundreds of its unwanted migrants in our backyard, we can say that the prank has gone on long enough.