Asylum seekers to Canada have reached a record high and will cost Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars each year to house and accommodate them.
Deputy Chair of the Refugee Protection Division, Roula Eatrides, said it currently takes 14 months for a case to be processed with the division. However, she said that the division was funded for 60,000 cases this year, but intake has risen to over 200,000 claims, resulting in a wait time of 44 months.
“About 70% of our inventory is about a year old, or less than a year,” she said.
Eatrides confirmed this was the highest volume the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada had ever seen.
The revealed data followed Conservative MP Arpan Khanna questioning immigration officials in the House of Commons.
He said that 14 months increasing to 44 is notable because it gives fake asylum claimants more than triple the amount of time to stay in Canada.
“They’re allowed to get a job, they’re allowed to get health care. They’re allowed to stay in our country. Out of the 200,000 new referrals, 70% are just within this year. So all the changes Marc Miller has made have actually led to this crisis,” said Khanna. “An average refugee costs taxpayers $82,000 per refugee per year.”
It was previously revealed that Canadian taxpayers paid $224 per day to accommodate illegal asylum claimants, which would equate to $81,760 a year.
“The refugee program was never supposed to be a backdoor entry into our country to get a work permit. It was supposed to be there to help those that were fleeing persecution, that had an act of war in their country of origin, and that wanted to save their lives,” said Khanna.
However, he added that from Jan. to Sep., 14,000 international students also filed for asylum in Canada.
“Marc Miller himself acknowledges that most of these cases are likely going to be fake asylum claims for folks whose statuses are expiring but want to stay in this country,” said Khanna.
Miller previously called the rate at which the level of temporary foreign workers and international students had grown unsustainably and said the whole system was “out of control.”
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has historically ramped up immigration levels and deemed anyone against the mass immigration agenda a racist, he recently admitted the system was out of control.
However, instead of shouldering the blame, Trudeau blamed “bad actors.”
“He blames bad actors for immigration problems. No. He is the bad actor,” said Khanna. “This is classic Trudeau: he creates a problem, then he says he should have solved it sooner.”
According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian income was $70,500 a year in 2022.
Asylum seekers receive $81,760 per person annually in legal assistance, housing, food, and medical care, $11,260 more than the average Canadian salary.
Paying for the 200,000 asylum claimants will cost Canadian taxpayers $16.35 billion a year.
