Some want to tear it up, others, more numerous, to revise it. Unnoticed for nearly 15 years, the Safe Third Country Agreement is now on the list of priority topics to discuss with President Joe Biden during his visit to the country this week. The Americans have shown little appetite for its modernization so far and, to better understand their point of view, The duty spoke with officials who were at the forefront of the discussions surrounding this treaty.
It is by omission that the Agreement gives people crossing Roxham Road the possibility of seeking asylum in Canada. His text does not directly mention this now famous Montérégie road: it is rather that he says nothing about the crossings between the official entry points. These asylum seekers avoid the application of the agreement, since it simply does not cover this space.
Is this a silly oversight? Or a deliberate, even calculated exclusion? Even the one who signed the agreement in December 2002, Gene Dewey, is not sure: “I have not been able to identify a specific reason for omitting the mention of border crossings at irregular points of entry “, he admits in an interview.
“Bureaucratically inconvenient”
Mr. Dewey has even consulted his colleagues from when he was Assistant Secretary of Population, Refugees and Migration for George W. Bush, but he still can’t put his finger on why. One “possible explanation”, he mused, is that including all entry points between official border crossings would have been “bureaucratically cumbersome”. Neither Canada nor the United States was “equipped” from the point of view of officials to handle arrivals anywhere on “the longest unguarded border in the world”, as he calls it. The treaty would thus have been “unrealistic” because it was impossible to enforce in order to turn back new arrivals on the entire border.
Did they consider the appearance of places like Roxham during the negotiations before the agreement? The considerations at the time were not the same, replies Doris Meissner. She participated in pre-deal discussions while heading the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), appointed by President Bill Clinton.
Only official ports of entry were included, “because that was really the most frequent circumstance at that time,” she says over the phone. It may seem like “ancient history,” she agrees: “So I wouldn’t say it was forgotten, but that just wasn’t the concern at the time. »
The majority of asylum seekers arrived at the time by land from the United States by presenting themselves at an official post, certain analyzes have shown. This was not the case in 2022, when almost half (43%) of the 92,000 asylum seekers in Canada entered irregularly from the lands of our neighbor to the south.
The number of asylum applications was also higher in the years preceding the entry into force of the agreement, in 2004.
After September 11
It is often repeated that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were the trigger for the agreement, but the negotiations go back much further. “Discussions date back to the mid-1990s, and we were authorized in 1996 to continue them in order to reach a bilateral agreement,” recalls Ms.me Meissner, now a senior research fellow and director of US immigration policy research for the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
The concept of safe third countries was emerging in Europe in particular, where the Dublin Convention came into force in 1997 so that a single State would be responsible for examining an asylum application.
A draft agreement had already been presented in November 1995 by the Canadian and American governments. The terrorist attacks of 2001 therefore especially accelerated the negotiations, specifies Mr. Dewey. “It became more urgent to demonstrate unwavering solidarity with the United States against terrorist threats. It had then become the dominant consideration when we were talking about crossings of our border by non-Canadians and non-Americans, ”he explains.
Were there flows of people from Canada to the United States that motivated them to sign this treaty? The man who is also a Vietnam veteran and has spent several years at the Pentagon says he has never had a demonstration of it. After September 11, 2001, information was circulating that some terrorists came through the northern border. “It was certainly not a common phenomenon as much as the reverse […]but we were in a context of extreme vigilance”, he summarizes.
His understanding is that his signature to the Agreement was based primarily on “good diplomacy”: “Our reason may not have been as compelling as Canada’s, but our collaboration had a lot to do with trust and respect between our two countries. »
On the Canadian side, it was not possible to speak to the signatory, Bertin Côté. John Manley, Minister of Foreign Affairs during the period just preceding the signing, meanwhile affirmed in 2017 on the airwaves of CBC that the agreement was “our request”, that is to say that of Canada. He also added: “It was difficult to obtain for my counterpart at the time, Tom Ridge. We got the Safe Third Country Agreement in exchange for other things”, without however specifying which ones.
A question of scale?
US interest in renegotiating the Accord today does not seem obvious or pressing to these two former politicians.
After Joe Biden became president, several experts insisted that the southern border would be an absolute priority – not the northern one. “If it’s true that it’s not a priority, it’s probably because the United States is satisfied with the agreement as it is now,” says Doris Meissner, while emphasizing that “the concern [au sujet de Roxham] is legitimate”.
In fiscal year 2021-2022, more than 2.7 million people were intercepted at the US border with Mexico. In comparison, the 39,171 people who passed through Roxham during this period represent 1.4% of this total.
“Our country is probably facing one of the greatest migration challenges in its history,” explains Gene Dewey. He maintains a certain reserve while calling for more to be done in terms of humanitarian support and development of the countries of origin of asylum seekers, in particular by reviving a bilateral advisory group on these issues. “I’m no longer in government so I can’t judge the motivations behind current policies. […] What I can say is that many bad decisions are made when we avoid looking at the underlying causes. To begin with, why do people seek asylum? he said.
While Canada is “admired” around the world for hospitality, Ms.me Meissner also believes it’s partly because of its location: “You’ve never had the kind of challenges” the United States faces, she says, since the US border “is accessible to hundreds of thousands of people leaving terrible conditions. But this is not to close the debate, it rather invites us to preserve public support for immigration by “adapting” policies.