C'Mon Over!

"Aided and abetted by similarly inclined municipal and provincial politicians, official Ottawa's averting of its gaze from border breaching, is only one facet of a much larger political impulse."
"The impulse? To import, through legal and perhaps illegal immigration and refugee intakes, large numbers of future, grateful prospective voting blocs, contrary to Canadians' national interest."
Julie Taub, former member, Immigration and Refugee Board
David B. Harris, director of intelligence program, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.

A family from Haiti approach a tent in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, stationed by Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as they haul their luggage down Roxham Rd. in Champlain, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 7, 2017. Charles Krupa

Canada's smiley-face Prime Minster Justin Trudeau started the ball rolling when he tweeted, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's message that under his administration the United States was prepared to police illegal migration and rid the country of millions of undocumented migrants living and working in the U.S. With his usual smug righteousness, Trudeau did some virtue-signalling that Canada loves migrants and would welcome them all, for Canada does not discriminate and irrespective of ethnicity, religion or ideology all are welcome to enter Canada.

They've been entering ever since. To claim refugee status. Not only those who have lived in the U.S. on special permits set to end, but those smuggled into the country and living there illegally for years. Even many from African countries who obtain visitors' visas for the especial purpose of entering the U.S. only to exit it forthwith at the closest illegal crossing they can reach and that's usually from New York State directly into the Province of Quebec.

To expedite matters and be viewed as especially kind and helpful, the federal government has stationed RCMP officers at those illegal crossings to greet the migrants wishing to declare themselves refugees, and escort them to inland Canada Border Services Agency offices where they are then invited to make their asylum claims. Right at the illegal crossings, while official Ottawa claims it intends to stop these crossings from happening, welcome tents have been set up, along with washrooms, chairs, and food.

Refugees who crossed the Canada-U.S. border near Hemmingford, Quebec, are processed in a tent after being detained in August. The flow of asylum seekers that began this past summer has resumed this spring. Most of the new arrivals are Nigerians. (Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images)

Since early 2017, 20,000 people from Haiti and Nigeria and El Salvador among other countries have penetrated Canada's border illegally. Over the course of the summer, 400 such migrants claiming refugee status are expected to come across on a daily basis. And now, for the first time in Canada's refugee intake history, there are more entering illegally than the number who make application legally a trend expected to continue and swell. The total refugee-claimant numbers have risen from 18,644 a year earlier to the current 48,974.

There is an initial cost to be reckoned with for each of these asylum seekers, of between $15,000 to $20,000, but that is just the beginning of the financial burden to the Canadian taxpayer. Despite that these migrants are not legally genuine refugees until a formal hearing takes place, they are entitled to a social assistance package rivalling those of Canadian citizen entitlements with benefits such as medical care, children's dental and eye care, prescription drug care, and housing, along with legal aid support. All this, at a time when the province is struggling to provide Canadians with the level of care they need.

Mostly Haitian migrants about to cross illegally into Canada in August 2017. Approximately 25,000 people crossed illegally into Canada to claim asylum last year, about 18,000 at the Quebec- US border. Photo Reuters/Christinne Muschi

The cost to Canadians for the 20,000 illegal crossers thus far is estimated between $300 to $400 million. But it doesn't stop there, since tax-funded immigration reviews and appeals, along with the potential need of years of social-welfare support during the process swells the cost exponentially.
The system is now so overwhelmed by history-breaking numbers that legal applicants' hearings are sometimes cancelled in an effort to deal with claims by illegal arrivals. In so doing, in effect rewarding illegal migration.

Jean-Pierre Fortin, Union leader for the Canadian Border Services Agency remarks that Canada has been left with a "Swiss cheese" border. Canada has the option of creating temporary CBSA ofices at illegal border entry points. When migrants declare their refugee intentions at such offices transiting through the U.S. they would be refused in recognition of the agreement signed between the U.S. and Canada reflecting the 'safe first country' entrance where if entry is either Canada or the U.S. the other turns away entrants to the second safe country.

Mr. Fortin recommends setting up hundreds of CBSA members to work on plugging border gaps. To do so the agency would have to hire more officers and be better funded, with their technological tools upgraded. Instead, Canada welcomes illegal entrants with trailers, tents and bathrooms, and where food is available to the weary cross-border infiltrators where the most popular crossing from Champlain, N.Y. to Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec means a crossing of about ten metres.

And directly opposite, four kilometres east, stands the official Lacolle crossing, studiously avoided by the migrants who opt for the illegal over the legal means of entry to Canada. Just west of the popular illegal crossing and another six kilometres leads you to the official Hemmingford crossing, another option for legal entry to Canada, but spurned in favour of the opportunistic illegal crossings guaranteed to eventually lead to a hearing but with the current and anticipated future backlogs the burden of housing, feeding and health services to the teeming hordes can go on for years.

Rows of tents had been set up in 2017 near the illegal border crossing point in Quebec to house the influx of illegally crossing asylum claimants before they're sent on to Montreal and Toronto, etc. Photo- Radio-Canada

Ontario is currently undergoing a prelude to a provincial election with the leader of the New Democratic Party, high in the polls, promising to turn Ontario into a "sanctuary province" for illegal migrants, where public services would be open to everyone irrespective of citizenship status, including voting privileges. The three-month waiting period for public health coverage would be waived. "It's a basic humanitarian piece. It's a basic value that I think the vast majority of Canadians hold that human beings are human beings and we shouldn't withhold the necessities of life from anybody."

How do you argue with that logic? Justin Trudeau certainly wouldn't.