The Progressive Semantics of Welcoming Illegals to Canada

"Ottawa continues to experience a high demand for emergency shelter, now exacerbated by the pressures of irregular migration."
"The ability to respond to the current increased demand for shelter placement is hampered by the lack of capacity. This is affecting not only asylum seekers, but also families who have destabilized locally, households moving to Ottawa from other cities and provinces and other newcomers entering Canada through regular immigration channels."
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson: letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford

"I'm very concerned by Premier [Doug] Ford and [provincial] minister [Lisa] MacLeod really making statements that are difficult to understand when it comes to how they're describing asylum seekers."
"The use of the term] illegal border crossings [is quite unacceptable]."
federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen

"Some refugee activists have insisted that expressions such as 'illegal' border crossings should be banned from our journalism."
"The modifier 'illegal' in this context is accurate and clear, and it instantly helps our audience understand the story."
"[It represents] bureaucratic jargon [to use the term 'irregular' that the federal government prefers over] illegal border crossers." 
official CBC language guide

"The Conservatives have repeated ad nauseum that these people are crossing the border illegally, implying that they are criminals. However, they have been unable to name a single law broken by the immigrants crossing the border."
NDP MP Anne Minh-Thu Quach

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

For the past several years Canada has been attempting to cope with illegal residents living in the United States -- newly concerned at the election of Donald J. Trump as president promising to rid his country of the presence of millions of undocumented and thus illegal residents, inciting by default an exodus from the U.S. and a flood of would-be 'refugees' into Canada -- bypassing legal entry points to cross illegally to gain entrance and declare themselves refugees.

For the most part these have been Haitians, given leave after the earthquake and tsunami that hit Haiti to live on a temporary permit in the United States. There were Africans who were also living on temporary permits for humanitarian relief, expected to return to their countries of origin when the conditions that led them to leave were lifted. None had any intention of returning to their countries of origin, and when they found they could not remain in the U.S. they crossed into Canada.

Rows to tents had been set up in 2017 near the illegal border crossing point in Quebec to house the influx of illegally crossing asylum claimants. Photo- Radio-Canada

Originally it was Quebec that was being burdened by families trudging over the border to declare themselves refugees. These were illegal crossings, deliberately chosen to bypass the legal entry points where an agreement between the U.S. and Canada mandated that the first country of refuge maintained responsibility for the decision whether to admit or deny entry. Canada's Liberal government is prepared to host these illegal crossers, providing shelter, food, medical attention, education services until such time as refugee claims can be adjudicated which can take years.

Admitting refugees is a federal issue, not a provincial or municipal one, though Quebec has a special agreement with the federal government to look after its own immigration. But these are refugee claimants. Earlier Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale had stated: "Coming across the border in a way that tries to circumvent the law or defy proper procedure is no free ticket to Canada". It seems, however, that it is, if only for years at a time; all expenses paid.

Ahmed Aden Ali, 37, was a UN convention Somali refugee in the U.S. but was convicted of car theft there. He crossed into Canada to claim asylum but his claim was denied because of his criminal record and was deported in November of 2017. Deportations usually cost Canadian taxpayers thousands of dollars in airfare. Photo:Karen Pauls, CBC News

But by the time the claim for refugee status is determined years will have passed and people awaiting word have established themselves, had children, and jobs and in some instances simply cannot be found for deportation. In the meanwhile, social services are being strained to the limit to house, educate, medicalize along with other required social services in competition with legal residents and citizens of Canada.

Both the immigration and the public safety minister had adjudged that an estimated 90 percent of would-be refugees will face rejection simply because they don't in any measure qualify as genuine refugees, rather being in fact economic migrants. By processing them however, as legitimate refugees until the final determination is made, legitimate refugees and immigrants obeying the law by going through approved channels find themselves and their needs detained in an ever-lengthening queue to access strained resources.

Majority of illegal migrants to Canada in 2018 are Nigerians with U.S. travel visas

The very fact that Nigerians in particular enter the United States with temporary visitors' visas with the sole intention of passing directly through into Canada to declare themselves refugees registers just how pathetic Canada's response has been to the never-ending entry of illegal migrants. These pretenders will never be approved, but they will gain the opportunity to live in Canada for years, taking advantage of any generous social programs available, paid for by Canadian taxpayers.

"They are not 'irregular' border crossers; they are illegal border crossers. Let us get this straight", responded Conservative MP John Brassard to the controversy over progressively-correct sensitivities to labelling people in recognition of their behavior. The fact is that crossing the border into Canada, bypassing an official port of entry is illegal. It is a deliberately illegal act, flouting Canadian law, since most migrants pass directly before a bilingual sign informing them that they are breaking the law.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer informs a migrant couple of the location of a legal border station, shortly before they illegally crossing from Champlain, N.Y., to Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, Monday, Aug. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

"It is illegal to cross the border here or any place other than a Port of Entry. You will be arrested and detained if you cross here", a sign reads close to the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, the Quebec crossing where most unauthorized border crossings take place. As soon as the crosser states to an RCMP officer that they are asylum seekers, they are ushered toward a legal area where they are permitted to make their claim for refugee status. This is a pantomime well known by would-be claimants before entering Canada.

Under Canadian law, though they have committed a crime by entering Canada illegally, by claiming to be refugees their 'criminal' status is lifted and they are legally 'deferred' from prosecution. After all, they are only fulfilling their search for asylum in view of the one-upsmanship Tweet that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau virtuously wrote as an advocate for all those seeking asylum no matter their circumstances, that Canada will welcome them.

Canada has committed to the intake of a million immigrants between 2018 and 2020. This is Canada's normal, through regular, lawful channels, program of immigrant intake. Apart from which there is the lawful channels whereby Canada accepts its share of refugees in a world which has seen a monumental increase of migrating populations fleeing oppression, persecution, and deadly conflict largely perpetrated by Muslim majority countries and inflicted on their own captive populations.