OTTAWA – The United Nations is bracing for a further increase in the number of refugees this year, as last month’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria adds to a series of crises that has the world looking to Canada for more help.
“The need around the world is enormous,” said Kelly Clements, the UN’s deputy high commissioner for refugees, on a visit to Canada this week.
“It’s the beginning of what we anticipate will be another very difficult year.”
Over 40 percent of foreign border-crossers deemed by border agents to be security risks were still allowed into Canada by the Department of Immigration, according to a report.
“Due to multiple factors and considerations, the Department of Immigration authorized entry or permission to stay in Canada to a significant proportion of applicants who had received a non-favourable recommendation or an inconclusive screening,” wrote the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) in an internal audit obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.
CHAMPLAIN, New York — Migrants are crossing the northern border both into the U.S. and into Canada illegally, causing chaos on both the Canadian and American sides, with the latter side reeling from the costs.
Border Patrol encountered a nearly 900% surge of migrants into the U.S. in the Swanton sector—which spans parts of New York and Vermont—in January, when agents recorded 367 apprehensions. Migrants are also crossing illegally into Canada in droves along Roxham Road in Champlain, New York, where taxis with “frontera,” or “border” written in Spanish, on them, bring people back and forth for hours every day.
Increased illegal crossings from Canada into the U.S. have not reached a crisis yet, but collaboration between the two countries’ border patrols can always be improved, according to the chief of U.S. border patrol.
Raul Ortiz spoke with CTV National News’ Richard Madan on Thursday about the issues patrolling the U.S.’s northern border amid staffing shortages and an increase in crossings.
Last year, there were more than 100,000 migrant encounters from Canada, according to Homeland Security, which is more than three times the amount recorded in 2020.
An author should be pleased to see his thesis bolstered by events. Yet since writing The Coming of Neo-Feudalism in 2020, I have not found any joy in the continued growth of the West’s class divides, as wealth becomes increasingly concentrated in ever fewer hands. The good news is that the working and middle classes are not yet out for the count, and are showing welcome signs of pushback against both state and corporate power.
Police have arrested five people and have issued arrest warrants for two others following a months-long investigation into an alleged human trafficking ring that they say was enticing Mexican nationals into Canada with promises of a “better life” and then exploiting them for their labour.
The investigation, dubbed “Project Norte,” began in November after York Regional Police received a complaint from a single Mexican national about his work and living conditions in Canada.
How and where did they get across the Border?
The captives were transported to farms and factories to work. Why aren’t these locations named?
As far as I am concerned the Trudeau government is complicit in human trafficking.
Hélène Gravel’s house sits on Roxham Road near Canada’s most famous illegal border crossing, used by migrants leaving the United States to seek asylum up north. She has watched with increasing frustration as a bitter winter has failed to stanch record inflows and as New York City even began buying bus tickets for migrants headed her way.
“There’s no political will to fix this,’’ Ms. Gravel, 77, said in her driveway, a stone’s throw from the border.
“Canada is soft,’’ she said, adding that asylum-seekers should be processed at official border crossings. “And the United States doesn’t care because this is nothing compared with what’s happening on their southern border.”
A group of Republican lawmakers say it’s time to protect the border. No, not that border. The other one, north of the United States. The one many Americans forget.
Their focus: the frontier with Canada.
That northern border usually is an afterthought in American politics, comfortably ensconced on the back burner of the country’s searing debates about the Mexican border.
The number of deceased immigrants recovered at the U.S.-Mexico border spiked during President Joe Biden’s first full year in office last year to the highest number on record, according to data acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Washington Examiner.
Data tracked by federal law enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border indicate that a record-high 880 immigrants who illegally entered the United States were found deceased in fiscal 2022, which ended in September. The Washington Examiner obtained the Border Patrol data Monday through a FOIA request filed in July 2022.
WASHINGTON – Canada’s border with the United States, the longest in the world and an enduring symbol of bilateral co-operation, has largely avoided becoming a partisan cudgel on Capitol Hill.
That, however, may be about to change.
Two U.S. House Republicans, Rep. Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania and Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, have enlisted 26 fellow members of Congress for a new coalition focused on immigration, crime and national security at the Canada-U.S. border.
Protect our National borders? Why that sounds like something Christine Anderson would say! https://t.co/WSABAkcgmM
— Fancypants Maloney (@fancypants_s) February 28, 2023
The people who arranged a lunchtime meeting between three Conservative MPs and controversial far-right German politician Christine Anderson are disputing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s claim that the Canadian legislators went into the gathering with no knowledge of Ms. Anderson’s views.
The two organizers of the meeting, Stacey Kauder and Bethan Nodwell, also say Mr. Poilievre has shown a lack of respect for the many Canadians who turned out for the other events they arranged with Ms. Anderson, which included speaking engagements in several Canadian cities last week.
As Ontario faces a chronic shortage of housing and rapidly climbing rents, landlords in the province are increasingly trying to evict their tenants and take possession of those rental units.
In 2022, the Landlord and Tenant Board, which adjudicates rental-housing disputes in the province, received more than 5,550 eviction applications in which landlords sought units for themselves, family members or new buyers. That was an increase of 41 per cent from 2019, according to numbers provided by the province to The Globe and Mail.
Bused out of Quebec, francophone asylum seekers struggle to get medical services
Over the phone, the woman’s voice is regretful but hurried — she says she’s sorry, but if the French-speaking migrant on the other end of the line cannot find someone to translate English, the doctor won’t see him for the medical exam he needs in order to claim asylum in Canada.
CBC News obtained a recording of the phone conversation the man says took place Wednesday in Niagara Falls, Ont.
“It’s not possible to speak with the doctor if you can’t speak English,” the woman tells him in French. “You have to find someone at your hotel to help you.”
“I don’t know anyone here,” Guirlin — whose last name CBC News has agreed to withhold because of his precarious immigration status — replies.
It started last summer with 87, grew to 300, and most recently shot up to around 2,000 hotel rooms that were being utilized in Niagara Falls, Ont., to accommodate asylum seekers sent there from Quebec.
And with nearly 3,000 migrants in total having been transferred since July, community services of the city are feeling the pressure on their already stretched resources to meet the needs of this sudden influx of people.
“We’re trying to be good Canadians and do what we always do, which is always lend a hand. But there’s limits to everything that we can physically do,” said Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati.
A small road straddling the Canada-U.S. border has become a political hot potato again in recent weeks as politicians call on Ottawa to close it to migrants claiming asylum.
Quebec Premier François Legault recently wrote a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking him to close Roxham Road to asylum-seekers. Thousands of them have crossed into Canada from the United States at Roxham in recent years.
Legault claimed that the influx of people waiting to have their claims heard has put heavy pressure on the province’s public services. In a similar letter published Tuesday in the Globe and Mail, Legault asked other provinces to help.
