By Andrew | On Tuesday, migrants from the US came to Canada again. The Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship headlined a corresponding hastily thrown together press scrum as follows: “Another group, this time with sick children and unaccompanied minors from the US has crossed over in Quebec.”
They also said that a total of 118 people crossed over that day including 49 unaccompanied minors and 8 sick children and their families. So far, so clear. The situation becomes less clear if one wants to know how old these unaccompanied, underage immigrants are, what gender and what nationality they are. Questions also arose over whether they received help to get to the border.
After all, one would think that Canadian taxpayers have a right to know for whom hundreds of thousands of their tax dollars are being spent. Because underage and unaccompanied asylum seekers cost a lot in accommodation at around $20,000 per month. The Globe and Nation asked the Ministry of Immigration about their gender, age and nationality. The answer was short: “For reasons of privacy, we cannot provide any details about the people who arrived in Quebec today.”
A witness to the day’s events at Roxham Road was able to provide a few more details: many of the “migrants” were in fact American and hispanic!
“I talked to a lady who was there with her husband. She said she was from Boston and had been told that they would be put up in a hotel until they were deported, so she was treating it like a vacation. She showed me a professionally printed pamphlet with a map, bus schedule and tips on what to say when they get to the border. She was with a group of about 40. … There were also many hispanics but none of them spoke english so I didn’t talk to them, but I saw many of them with the same pamphlet. They seemed very happy and relieved. There was about 30 of them, and about 30 who seemed to be african (Nigerian?).”
Everybody is the exception
The question of the origin of the migrants has been in the public interest since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “closed” the illegal border crossing in March. At that time, the federal government did not mention anything about staffing the location. No need to staff a “closed” border, right? Once word leaked out about this a new influx started, and rumours quickly flew about the origin of some of the “migrants,” and the level of organization that brought them there.
The unaccompanied minors are rumoured to have been sent ahead by parents with criminal records, so that the parents will be able to enter Canada under compassionate grounds to be reunited with their children. The parents usually wait in Albany and then make the trip north once their children have crossed.
Raquel Dancho, Conservative Party of Canada shadow Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship is “concerned about the rule of law,” but does not explicitly say whether the Conservatives would reduce immigration numbers, or what they would do about the unaccompanied minors who are using the system to get their parents admitted to the country.
Marco Mendicino, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship only said that “the migrant’s suffering while living under a Trump presidency” would be taken into account. “All BIPOC people are victims in the US today, and they need protection.”
The number is not decreasing
The UN Migration Pact has been adopted, so not only would parents and underage children be brought together as before, but also those people who have an adult sibling or even extended family in Canada.
This number will not decrease as Canada has already promised to take in three hundred and fifty thousand immigrants this and every, with the number set to increase before the end of Trudeau’s second mandate. What is 50,000 more?
Transverse Waves 