Refugees in Name Only : Illegal Migrants

"[Costs per migrant are expected to increase in future years, reaching an average of $16,666 per migrant for those that arrive in the year 2019]."
“This is largely due to longer projected wait times for migrants to complete the entire asylum claim process. This is a result of projected inflows being greater than the capacity of the federal organizations to process these claims, leading to greater expenses for federal health insurance costs."
"Given that future transfer payments [to cities caring for the illegal migrants] are not yet known, and the federal government is under no obligation to make these payments, the PBO [Parliamentary Budget Office] is unable to project these potential costs and they are therefore excluded from the cost estimate."
Costing Irregular Migration Across Canada's Southern Border — Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux

Asylum seekers cross the Canadian border at Champlain, N.Y., on August 4, 2017. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada estimates the cost per migrant entering Canada illegally to be $19,000 for those arriving over the border deliberately bypassing official border crossings from the United States in 2017-18. This is the cost to the federal government only, exclusive of provincial costs so it falls into the realm of processing applications. At the provincial, municipal level costs relating to shelter, welfare, medical services are additional.

Toronto has announced that their public welfare emergency shelter housing is now 40 percent occupied by illegal migrants. The statistics for Montreal are similar. While illegal migrants are in Canada awaiting the outcome of their refugee applications they draw from provincial welfare coffers. Though they've crossed illegally, by declaring themselves refugees Canada accepts their claims as valid and processes the applications accordingly. But since so many do not fall into the refugee category their applications are rejected.

Under the Canadian system the failed applicants can appeal endlessly, stringing out their welfare status for years. The Canada Border Services Agency has identified an emerging and successful ploy on the part of claimants entering Canada illegally. This is a calculated move for a family to send one of its members ahead to declare refugee status and once in Canada that person acts as an "anchor relative", whereby other family members may enter at a port of entry declaring themselves prospective immigrants.

A family, saying it is from Colombia, is arrested by RCMP officers as they cross the border into Canada from the United States as asylum seekers near Champlain, N.Y., on April 18, 2018.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

Effectively, a migrant crosses into Canada between official entry points avoiding the Safe Third Country Agreement where they would otherwise be viewed as ineligible, since the United States is a 'safe country' and as the first country of haven, declaring on entry to Canada is rendered invalid. Migrants seeking refugee status make their claim in the first "safe" country accessed. Claim registered, the way is open for the migrant to access the welfare system while engaging the asylum claims process allowing them hearings and appeals and sponsorship of other family members.

The Liberal government likes to portray any critics of this ineffective and failed process as a bigot behaving in the most "un-Canadian" of ways. After characterizing critics as racist exclusionists they point out the number of children who are involved accompanying their parents as refugees, so critics are also obviously inhumane preferring to set aside universal human rights in the interests of blocking those they consider undesirable as future citizens of the country. Not the "Canadian way".

The sponsorship by illegal entrants to Canada of family members is open to pretty wide strokes including parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces; extended, not just nuclear family units. The never-ending appeals process gives migrants new hearings at the Refugee Appeal Division should their claim be rejected by the Refugee Protection Division, and then another appeal beckons, at the Federal Court if the intermediate one fails. Years of living on the public dole. How mean-spirited to point that awkward factoid out.

The Immigration and Refugee Board held the capacity to hear 24,000 claims in the 2017-18 year during which period 52,142 new asylum claims were logged, of which 23,215 represented illegal migrants flooding the system with claims beyond its capability to handle; a backlog created of 64,929 cases. Which, needless to say, extends the period by years, resulting from those making claims and then appealing rejections.

Of the refugee claims, over half were made by irregular migrants from Haiti and Nigeria, an observation that the Liberal government labels as "fear-mongering". There is a right way to file an application for immigrant or refugee status and that is through recognized official channels, respecting a country's borders and its right to choose who it will permit entry. The wrong way is being used and it is being rewarded. Something here does not compute.