This article originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.
By Michael Barutciski, October 9, 2024
The federal government is finally acknowledging that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has been too lenient in issuing visas, and that our asylum system is being abused.
Last month, Immigration Minister Marc Miller admitted that Ottawa needed to do a “stronger job” of preventing people who had been given visitor visas from taking advantage of our overly generous policies. He had previously acknowledged that the immigration system had gotten “out of control” and he’s called overseas police checks “unreliable.” He has also said it was “alarming” that increasing numbers of international students were claiming asylum to stay in Canada, and he has drawn attention to India, “where we are seeing people exploiting the visa system.” India was already the main source country for both permanent and temporary residents in Canada; it is now also a source of migrants who are “not legitimate asylum claimants,” according to Mr. Miller.
The minister’s general nonchalance about the government’s overly generous immigration policies speaks volumes. When he suggests that the visa process has to be tightened, for instance, he avoids mentioning the work of his predecessor in the immigration portfolio, Sean Fraser, who deliberately relaxed the screening procedures for visitor visas despite warnings from his own department that there would be an increase in asylum claims, and that the decision risked “eroding public confidence in managed migration.” Since then, an increasing number of alleged visitors have decided to stay permanently, often by claiming asylum upon arrival, which explains the record-breaking numbers of claims at airports in Toronto and Montreal – even though the government has not been forthcoming about them.
Granting foreigners such easy access to the country has led to various consequences, but one of the most significant has been the potential damage to the vital Canada-U.S. relationship, with our system incentivizing people to illegally cross our land border into America. This has led to an explosion in encounters with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); in the 2023 fiscal year, CBP arrested roughly 7,000 migrants – more than the previous 12 years combined – and there has been an average of 15,000 CBP encounters per month for the last couple of years. CBP has had significantly more entry-port encounters with migrants who are on the U.S.’s terror watchlist at its northern border than at its southern one with Mexico. Lucrative smuggling networks have even emerged, and they are brazenly advertising themselves on social media.
Washington has become increasingly vocal about this problem. It is likely even more concerned after a Pakistani citizen who had arrived in Canada through a student visa was arrested and charged last month for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in New York City.
As a lawyer by profession, Mr. Miller should know that the Refugee Convention obliges Canada to exclude terrorists from refugee status, but that it is ultimately the government’s decision to authorize access to the Immigration and Refugee Board’s procedure for this status that recently allowed Ahmed Eldidi and his son Mostafa, who allegedly planned a terror attack in Toronto, to stay in Canada. Not only are resources not being devoted to fulfilling the international legal obligation to apply the exclusion clause through due diligence, the Canadian government only found out about these alleged terrorist threats from its U.S. and French partners.
Even if Canadians do not care about internal security threats resulting from uncontrolled migration, the impact on the U.S. will ultimately force a change in Canada’s policy. Our strategic importance to the U.S. is rooted in part in our secure shared border. If that assurance has been called into question by the large-scale illegal smuggling of migrants into the U.S., it would reflect a Canadian government that has misunderstood its priorities regarding continental co-operation and security. No White House, under any president, would find this acceptable.
After giving so many visas to various categories of temporary residents, the government has created false expectations for the people who were expecting to immigrate here permanently – so much so that many are now considering illegal options. While Canadians like to boast about how open they are to immigration, this attitude can camouflage policy errors that largely came from the pressures of lobbyists for businesses seeking low-wage labour and of open-border advocates.
This unserious policymaking needs to be corrected, and we need to have an honest conversation about the border. If we fail to do so, we risk cementing a reputation as an unreliable partner that compromises continental security, as well as losing the public confidence around immigration, on which this country relies.
Michael Barutciski teaches at York University’s Glendon School of Public and International Affairs. He recently published a report for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute that explores how immigration and asylum is affecting the Canadian federation.
