What to do with Roxham Road?
To this real question, the Bloc Québécois has just responded with an advertising slogan that the National Front would not deny: “Quebec is not an all inclusive. »
As a subtle rallying cry to all xenophobes.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, wants us to believe that by sending the Sûreté du Québec with chicken wire and leaflets, we will solve the problem.
A certain conservative nationalist movement (now in the majority in the PQ and the Bloc) gets so excited around Roxham Road, it’s like there’s something providential about it. The idea is not to find an intelligent solution, which is not simple, but to derive the maximum political benefit from it. And to be more “nationalist” than the CAQ. Too bad if it’s on the backs of migrants. Too bad if they are presented as profiteers, not to say great substitutes…
An “all inclusive”? Serious ?
Do you believe that people fleeing poverty, that these mothers who have crossed America on foot with their children, who pile into YMCAs while waiting for accommodation, come on vacation to Quebec?
With almost 40,000 crossings in 2022, the Roxham Road entry into Canada is not sustainable. The reception system cracks, asylum applications are not processed in time, exploiters abound.
Suzanne Colpron described yesterday in our pages the business of those who shuttle between Plattsburgh and Roxham Road for migrants from Latin America, Afghanistan or Haiti.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE
Tyler Tambini, who appears in our report published on Saturday, has traded his job as a roofer for that of a “smuggler”.
This old road was already used by African-Americans fleeing slavery by marching north. She rose to international prominence during the Trump years, when Justin Trudeau, in contrast, extolled Canada’s generosity to asylum seekers.
The path has become for many the bypass route of the Canadian immigration system. Not everyone who crosses the border is a legal refugee. A “refugee” is someone who is persecuted in their country – for political, religious, etc. reasons. Canadian law, inspired by international conventions on humanitarian law, grants citizenship to people who have fled persecution.
It is an exception to the immigrant selection system, which is quite demanding.
Poverty, even extreme poverty, does not qualify as a “refugee” within the meaning of the law.
But even if he does not qualify as a refugee in the sense of the law, even if it is “only” to hope for a better life, a migrant is not for all that a “profiteer” that one can afford to compare to a vacationer who exploits the taxpayer. Of course people use and abuse the Canadian system. Of course the path is famous in the world.
But these migrants who arrive from Venezuela, Haiti, Nigeria are fleeing, when they are not fleeing persecution or war, often fleeing poverty. By saying “Quebec is not an all-inclusive”, it is not the politicians that we are targeting: it is them that we designate with national contempt.
The Quebec Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette, told the truth: if we simply close Roxham, we move the problem and we probably put people in danger.
The watchword of the Legault government, however, is to “close Roxham”, so she corrected her statement. But François Legault knows it: it will not be solved with a Frost fence. Especially when you know that US government employees refer applicants to Roxham.
The pressure from the South is transferred to the North.
If we want things to be done in a somewhat orderly fashion, we will have to do so with American collaboration. Even if it means reviewing the safe third country agreement – yet, already, under this agreement, an asylum seeker is required to make his request in the first country, before attempting to reach Canada by land. It’s not easy, among other things because Washington has no real interest in closing the northern valve.
But even when we have curbed the migratory flow of this path on which we focus all our attention, the arrival of migrants will not stop by magic, or with leaflets. This is one of the great challenges of humanity for this century.
Developed countries cannot relieve all the misery of the world. But we not only have a humanitarian duty and commitments: we also have a great benefit to draw from welcoming refugees.
The least politicians can do, if they really are on the side of intelligent solutions to this real problem, is not to stir up contempt. Not to play with the border to scare people, as is done in some American or European states.