Canada Publicizes Long Odds on Asylum
Immigrants have been fleeing the United States for Canada, hoping for a less stringent immigration system that will allow them to establish a permanent home in the land of our neighbor to the North. It’s an issue we’ve covered before (here, here, here, here, here, here).
As the NYT reports, “Canadian officials are warning that even liberal Canada has its limits amid concerns, fairly or not, that illegal migration is stretching the immigration system to a breaking point[.]”
Ahmed Hussan, Canada’s minister of immigration, notes that only 8% of claims for asylum from Haitian migrants have been granted. That’s not a strong shot.
Canada is taking steps to let would-be migrants know that the odds are not in their favor. Worried about Salvadorans fleeing north after the loss of TPS, Canada sent one member of parliament, Pablo Rodriguez, to L.A. to meet with “members of the Hispanic community there to explain the limits of Canadian asylum policy.”
It’s a strategy Canada has employed before. This summer, another Canadian member of parliament, Emmanuel Dubourg, traveled to Miami to inform members of the Haitian communities there that gaining asylum in Canada would be difficult.
But there is a very large backlog of cases (over 40,000) in Canada. And just waiting for one’s asylum case to be heard will inevitably buy migrants some time in Canada. Maybe even years.
-KitJ