Everything indicates that the steady flow of migrants will not dry up on Roxham Road. But don’t worry, there won’t be an invasion, nor a big replacement. However, we will have to stop seeing these people as plague victims and rather as a driving force. Otherwise, we will waste valuable human capital, miss their integration and create more poverty. To sit on our hands too long, the awakening could be brutal.
I was speaking this week to an American official involved in the integration of refugees in the United States. “The elastic is stretched to the maximum,” he told me. He is overwhelmed, he has never seen this in his entire career and dreams of early retirement. His department has quintupled in five years like the number of refugees and people received for humanitarian reasons.
South of the US border, in four years, the number of illegal entries has increased sixfold to 2.3 million in 2022, according to US Customs and Border Protection. A new peak. Necessarily, part of all this beautiful people ends up in Canada, more precisely on Roxham Road. Result: the number of irregular entries has risen to 40,000 in 2022. The vast majority of these people have applied for asylum. A derisory figure for the Americans, but a record here.
The safe third country agreement was meant to avoid that. Signed in 2002 between the United States and Canada, it was based on the premise that these two countries that had signed the Refugee Conventions offered identical protection to people fleeing persecution in their country. Today, the Canadian government claims that suspending the agreement would create a diplomatic incident by sending the message to the Americans that they are not respecting their commitment. And yet, I suspect that for many of them, the suspension of the agreement would be received as a huge relief.
The agreement, in effect, is now outdated. Not because of humanitarian law issues, but rather because of a big capacity problem on the American side. There would be 1.7 million asylum applications pending there, seven times more than 10 years ago.
The wait for a hearing lasts five years; it’s twice as long as in Canada. Recently, President Joe Biden even restricted asylum claims on American soil. “The system cracks everywhere,” concludes the official who prefers to remain anonymous.
Suspending the agreement would allow more irregulars to leave American soil with access to all Canadian border crossings along the border, not just Roxham Road. “Maybe you should do your part, you who live in this big, almost empty country,” jokes the official. But is Ottawa ready to risk another major increase in asylum applications? The thing seems inevitable, but we seem to do everything to postpone the inevitable. Hence the importance of having a plan, a vision.
The safe third country agreement limits the wave. Roxham Road becomes the bottleneck that controls the irregular entry of tens of thousands of migrants into Canada.
Closing Roxham Road and maintaining the agreement means losing control of irregular entries, that is to say losing track of the majority of these migrants who enter our country, enriching the smugglers and feeding an underground world whose migrants are the victims. Google Maps exists, and our border with the Americans is porous. Quebec would be no exception to the rule.
Roxham Road is the “least worst” solution for Ottawa, even if it is to the detriment of Quebec. This has a price. The Quebec government should be generously rewarded. The large influx of refugees in the Montreal region puts the school network under pressure. Education Minister Bernard Drainville has every right to demand that Ottawa foot the bill.
If he wants to keep Roxham Road, Justin Trudeau will have to show much more leadership and ingenuity than filling buses with migrants and sending them blindly to Ontario. It just shifts the problem. We need a structured and very organized approach, with the participation of all the provinces and in interaction with all these people, in order to stem labor shortages across Canada. Work permits must also be quickly granted to asylum seekers, which is still very much lacking.
On the Quebec side, why systematically demand that all these people be transported outside Quebec? Why not retain at least French-speaking migrants? Why not allow the regions most affected by devitalization and the labor shortage, such as the North Shore, to tap into this pool of tireless workers who want to contribute? It’s getting organized, I think.
It is not that Quebec has reached its reception capacity, it is rather that it persists in remaining in an outdated reception system that marginalizes migrants. The Legault government, with all its popular support, would however be in the best position to explain to the population the potential of this living force. He chooses to feed the ambient prejudices. It’s never too late to change your approach.
Journalist Laura-Julie Perreault clearly reminds us in her excellent report last Sunday: the vast majority of these people with precarious status will remain in Quebec.1 However, for years, 2, 3, 4, 5 years and even more, they will have no possibility of taking French lessons. They do not have access to support from Emploi-Québec. And these people, many of them single mothers, never have access to subsidized child care. Because of this, these women will be unable to work. In the midst of a labor shortage, I don’t understand. After that, they will be accused of living on the hooks of the state!
Despite all these pitfalls, these people work, accumulate two or even three jobs at the same time, under dubious conditions, often exploited. They even learn to speak French. However, having seen her as the member for Bourassa-Sauvé, a riding that welcomes many immigrants, they never manage to get their heads out of the troubled waters of poverty. A waste of human capital, I said…
In such a context, Québec solidaire’s proposal to establish a regularization program for people without status who have been in the country for at least five years is a good idea. The guardian angel program that regularized the status of health care workers was another, but far too restricted. This allows these people to come out of the margins and integrate them into the formal economy of Quebec. They will pay taxes and enrich the province.
Having seen her over and over again as the member for Bourassa-Sauvé, the uncertainty that these people experience creates an anxiety-provoking climate that is transmitted to the whole family, and mental health takes a huge hit. All this despair overwhelms community resources, which are already stretched thin. Nothing good for Quebec.
And yet, with fresh eyes and a little initiative, in the midst of an unprecedented demographic crisis, the men and women of Roxham Road could make an even greater contribution to Quebec and Canada.