The Unstoppable Tide of Migrants Masquerading as Refugees

"It's unacceptable. It's impossible because we don't have the capacity."

"We cannot afford to give services. [Should the current pace continue Quebec will not be able to provide adequate housing for 36,000 new arrivals."

"You have to understand, the problem is that many of these people are not really refugees."

"A refugee is someone who is physically at risk in their country. But the majority are not refugees; eventually, when the file is analyzed, they are refused, returned back home."

Quebec Premier Francois Legault

"What is Quebec's capacity for compassion? or justice? It's maybe not unlimited, but the capacity is there."

Paul Clarke, interim executive director, Action Refugies Montreal

"We not only have the capacity, but we also have the need, in fact, for more people."

"The federal government could alleviate things tremendously simply by giving work permits shortly after people arrive, so that they can get to work, and there are many jobs that they could very usefully fill."

Jane Dench, executive director, Canadian Council for Refugees

Asylum seekers walk on Roxham Road before crossing the border into Canada. Photo by Chris Wattie/Reuters

Europe and North America have become sieves for the world's migrants from Africa, the Middle East, Central America, to pass through claiming to be refugees. They arrive in droves of tens of thousands through land crossings and across the seas, facing danger and privation, yet determined to make a new life for themselves anywhere but their places of origin. Among them are unaccompanied children whose families send them off in hopes that a better future awaits them. Sometimes it is death that awaits them.

The world has ample refugees; conflict creates them, desperate people trying to escape the chaos and threat inherent in conflict when it is primarily civilians whose lives are disrupted through dislocation, danger and often death. Internal and external conflict, tribal and religious antipathies turned violent, drug trafficking and crime mob wars prey on the poor and the unprotected. Societal breakdowns and desperation make for both refugees and migrants.

The refugees flee from danger to save their lives. The migrants flee from poverty and lack of opportunity to save their futures. In Europe, the gateways of Italy, Greece, France and Britain have been inundated with migrants determined to reach a promised land. And some countries like Austria and Germany did accept hundreds of thousands of migrants, while others like Hungary and Romania would not. It's not that countries are necessarily insular and xenophobic; they simply want to exercise their right to exclude those who they feel will not integrate successfully into their culture, accept their values and social mores, respect their laws and religion.

In Canada there are refugees aplenty; latterly from Afghanistan, civilians who chose to work alongside Canadian diplomats, military and humanitarian groups in Afghanistan, who required rescue from the now-governing Taliban for whom these people are nothing less than traitors slated for death. In Europe, the invasion by Russia into Ukraine, resulting in conflict and millions of displaced civilians, millions more fleeing to neighbouring countries as refugees have also provided refugees that Canada has taken in.

These are people needing to be housed, given medical attention, provided with the means whereby they can leave social assistance and begin to recover their human dignity through self-supporting employment, all of which come at great cost to the welcoming country. A country like many others who do not really need the additional burden of taking in migrants and providing the humanitarian assistance people who travel a long way facing danger require.

Over 100 refugee claimants enter Quebec daily through the rural path named Roxham Road, coming through the United States. It takes 14 months for the Canadian government to study asylum claims to either accept or reject them; in the interim Quebec is left to house and care for such 'refugees' and school their children, complains the premier of the province. The irregular Roxham Road border crossing was closed during the pandemic, but has since been re-opened.

The RCMP intercepted 7,013 asylum seekers crossing irregularly from the U.S. into Quebec since the beginning of the year, up from 4, 246 the year before. Over 15,000 asylum seekers were intercepted in 2019 after crossing into Quebec. Ultimately, points out Premier Legault, many of those who take to crossing illegally in the end have their claims turned down as not qualifying for refugee status, and must then return from whence they came. If they have not melted into the woodwork and Refugee and Immigration have lost sight of where they have settled themselves underground in Canada.