“It’s going to be a humanitarian catastrophe. “The smugglers are going to have a field day. “The clandestine crossings will explode. »
All of these phrases were uttered just a week ago by spokespersons for organizations working directly with asylum seekers on the Canadian side of the border.
They had just learned that the Canadian and American governments were expanding the Safe Third Country Agreement and that, as of March 25, it would no longer be possible to cross the border between the United States and Canada to apply for asylum on the other side without being turned back, with a few exceptions. Neither via Roxham Road nor at an official border post. Nowhere on the Canada-US border.
These organizations which know the migrants and their reality immediately saw the danger and said it loud and clear1. Have we listened to them?
This alert sounds even louder today. Since eight people have been found dead in a swamp on the Akwesasne reservation, which straddles Quebec, Ontario and New York State. According to what we learned on Friday as the investigation progressed, the two families – one Indian, the other Romanian – were trying to cross from Canada to the United States aboard a boat that capsized. The boat’s owner, Casey Oakes, is nowhere to be found. An unnamed drama that involves two young children, including a little Canadian citizen.
Of course, it would be dangerous to establish a direct causal link between this tragedy and the amendments to the US-Canada treaty aimed at migrants. We do not know all the details of this crossing and what led to this tragedy. The main interested parties are no longer there to testify.
But it would be even more dangerous not to see any links at all. To ignore that each rule change in Canada as in the United States makes waves among migrant populations and is often accompanied by panic movements and golden opportunities for smugglers.
To be convinced of this, we must go back to the history of the famous Roxham Road, which, until the election of Donald Trump, was unknown to the general public. However, as soon as the Republican president came to power in 2017, after more than two years of campaigning against irregular immigration, many families, especially from Haiti, headed for Canada because they feared be sent back to their country of origin.
After arduous passages in western Canada, the little Montérégie road – safer – became the main gateway for those who did not have the right to seek asylum through Saint-Bernard-de-Bernard. -Lacolle or another border post.
How can we expect the sudden disappearance of this emergency exit – as informal as it is predictable – not to be accompanied by the appearance of new clandestine passages in more dangerous places?
Especially since these changes come at the very time when the American government is cracking down hard against all irregular entries into its territory while limiting the right to seek asylum.
The Akwesasne tragedy is a terrible warning for the days, the months to come.
And it’s not the only incident of the last week. On March 25, the day the rules change, U.S. officers patrolling the border area near Champlain, New York, intercepted a Mexican woman walking barefoot near the border. and who was completely disoriented. She was hospitalized.
“Asylum seekers in Montreal are wondering what the new rules mean for them, for their families who are already on their way to Canada,” Mélissa Claisse of the Collectif Bienvenue, a Montreal organization that helps to the most vulnerable asylum seekers. “There is a lot of fear. And that fear will drive people underground. There will be more deaths. Avoidable deaths, ”she predicts.
Maybe it’s time to listen to it.
We should also have listened better when the community organizations that deal with asylum seekers called for help last January. There were a dozen of them around the table asking the Government of Quebec to give them the means to properly welcome these thousands of families asking for the protection of the country.2. Not once during this conference did I hear that the border had to be barricaded. We had no more room.
The CAQ government released emergency funds, but continued to ask Justin Trudeau for the “closure” of Roxham Road, believing that we “do not have the necessary reception capacity”, to use the words of François. Legault.
However, we have the reception capacity that we want to give ourselves.
Stephan Reichhold, spokesperson for the Round Table of Organizations Serving Refugees and Immigrants, especially has the impression that the message he sent with his colleagues was misunderstood.
Friday, Mr. Reichhold, Mme Claisse and several others demonstrated outside Justin Trudeau’s constituency office demanding an end to the Safe Third Country Agreement. They protested because they consider that the United States, which detains an impressive number of migrants in addition to giving no help to the asylum seekers they receive, is not a “safe country” for them. Because the dangers to life and human dignity are obvious.
The Supreme Court is looking into all this, but in the meantime, perhaps we could really pay attention to their complaints. They are rarely in the field.