A Liberal law intended on restricting the number of illegal border crossers entering Canada has failed to make a dent in the high number of people making asylum claims.
The law which was introduced by the Liberals in 2019 would prohibit people from making an asylum claim in Canada if they had already made one in another country.
Among those targeted under the law are migrants from Haiti, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan and the Congo, among other countries.
According to government statistics, the law only led to the rejection of 400 asylum claims since it was introduced in June 2019. The quantity is very low when compared to the nearly 12,000 asylum claims made by illegal border crossers between January and September last year.
Since Justin Trudeau’s “Welcome to Canada” tweet in 2017, over 50,000 people have crossed into Canada illegally.
The high intake of migrants into Canada has led to a growing backlog that is expected to balloon to 100,000 by 2021 and could take five years for applications to be processed while asylum claimants wait in Canada.
Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) officials have admitted that they can no longer eliminate the backlog with current resources but can only manage the file.
IRB member Richard Wex estimates it would cost up to $400 million for the backlog to be completely cleared.
In the last federal budget, the Liberals allocated $1.18 billion in taxpayer funds to handle the border mess over the next five years.
A 2019 report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that the cost associated with illegal border crossers would exceed $1.1 billion this year.
