Canada’s border cops are ringing the alarm bell about the record number of bogus asylum seekers who refuse to leave the country.
Every year, for the past few years, tens of thousands of people enter Canada illegally and make asylum claims. Once they apply to become refugees, their immigration status is normalized and Canada temporarily forgives the fact that they entered illegally. But only temporarily.
If the refugee claim is abandoned by the applicant or rejected by an immigration judge — as happens in about half of the cases — the temporary haven is lifted and the person goes back to their illegal status.
And, according to the head of the Canada Border Security Agency (CBSA) union, Canada is losing the battle when it comes to deporting these illegal migrants.
“For those asylum seekers that know that they are not going to be able to reach the stage that their claim will be granted in Canada, or they know they have a criminal history, the concern is they may disappear,” Jean-Pierre Fortin told Mercedes Stephenson on Global News.
They disappear. Including dangerous criminals.
To add insult to injury, the CBSA recently revealed that some of the claims they receive are from people of “unknown nationalities.”
“For various reasons, there are times when the CBSA cannot immediately determine a person’s country of origin upon their arrival in Canada,” said CBSA Western Canada Communications Officer, Luke Reimer.
An RCMP Freedom of Information request revealed that over half of the migrants crossing illegally into British Columbia were of “unknown nationality.”
“We certainly don’t have the resources to track them down and deport them,” said Fortin about the illegal migrants who “disappear.”
Fortin was advocating for more resources for his workers, as union bosses are known to do. But in this case, the stakes are high and CBSA workers are scrambling to deal with the record number of illegal border crossers and asylum seekers streaming into Canada.
As I reported in the Sun papers, Canada is on track to break its previous record of asylum claims in a single year. 2017 was the record year with 50,390 claims, then that number was topped in 2018 with 55,035. Now 2019 may beat them both.
In the first six months of this year, 26,860 people entered Canada illegally or under false pretenses to make asylum claims. That’s a higher number than at the half-way mark of the previous two years.
These 26,860 asylum seekers will join the queue of 156,155 people who have made refugee claims in Canada since 2016 — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first full year in office.
Despite these high numbers, fewer than 900 illegal migrants have been deported under Trudeau’s watch. According to a CBC report, fewer than half of rejected asylum claimants leave on their own, while the majority wait for the CBSA to find them and deport them.
No wonder Fortin and the CBSA want more resources. But how much should Canadians be forced to pay to keep illegal migrants out?
A CBSA report from 2015, prior to Trudeau becoming Prime Minister, showed that the agency spent more than $90 million per year on deportations.
That was before Trudeau welcomed the world’s migrants to come to Canada on social media, before his government rolled out the red carpet to illegal border crossers at Roxham Road, and before the Liberal Government dismantled the refugee determination system that once quickly rejected migrants from safe countries.
Our immigration system is a mess, and Canadian taxpayers are on the hook.
