Prime Minister François Legault demanded on Monday a reduction by half in the number of asylum seekers present in the territory. More than 20% of the total mentioned are applicants already approved by Ottawa, but waiting for their permanent residence because of the threshold set by Quebec.
For an asylum seeker to move from the “temporary” column to the “permanent” column in the tables used by governments, there are two main steps. The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), a federal administrative tribunal, must grant or reject an asylum application. As soon as an asylum seeker is accepted by this federal administrative court, he then becomes a “protected person”.
The protected person can then apply for permanent residence. This is where the target that Quebec has established at 3,550 “refugees recognized locally” per year comes into play.
More than 38,000 individuals residing in Quebec have already been recognized as protected persons by Ottawa and are waiting their turn to be part of this quota. At least this is the figure confirmed at Duty by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) last March. At the current rate, it would therefore take more than 10 years for everyone to fully obtain permanent residence in the province.
However, Statistics Canada ranks asylum seekers (without decision) with protected persons (request accepted) in its total of 176,000 asylum seekers in Quebec, the figure used by Mr. Legault at a press conference. People waiting represent more than 20% of the total.
A way to reduce temporary
“It is the responsibility of the federal government and we want a 50% reduction within a year,” insisted the Premier of Quebec. The office of provincial Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette confirmed to Duty that the number of these protected people will not change for 2024 and 2025. “Quebec is the only one that can set its thresholds and the federal government must accept our choices,” the cabinet said in a written statement.
There is therefore no question of reducing by 20% at once the number of people counted as asylum seekers, taken in this antechamber before permanent residence.
“It is certain that by keeping fairly stable thresholds [de résidents permanents], it creates a bottleneck,” observes Catherine Xhardez, professor of political science at the University of Montreal. She illustrates this mechanism between Quebec and Ottawa: “It’s like a faucet. Once the number set by Quebec is reached, Ottawa turns off the tap. For the others, you have to wait for the next quota. »
The researcher notes that these people may have left the province while they were in this no man’s land and that these moves are not always quickly or accurately reflected in the statistics.
A similar phenomenon of accumulation of files already approved by the federal government is occurring in two other categories: family sponsorship and people admitted for humanitarian reasons.
There would also be 30,000 Ukrainians arriving in Quebec thanks to the special program set up in 2022 following the Russian invasion. Most are still counted as temporary: “What route to permanent residence will be open for these people? » she gives as an example.
The official number of permanent residents accepted by the province is around 50,000 per year, she recalls.
As long as they cannot become permanent, all these people, including accepted asylum seekers, will continue to add to the data of temporary workers, she concludes.
This is also one of the messages sent by the federal Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, during his meeting with his provincial counterparts, namely to reduce the number of non-permanent residents by having them change their status. “It is Mr. Miller’s strategy to say that if we want the situation to calm down we must make them permanent. In the other provinces, it’s already like that,” analyzes the professor.
Even if new arrivals of asylum seekers were reduced by half, as the Legault government demands, this inventory will not evaporate, finally notes Mme Xhardez.