This Best Western hotel in Windsor, Ont., is a temporary home for some of the asylum seekers that the federal government redirected to smaller cities to relieve pressure on social supports.Dax Melmer/The Globe and Mail
It’s been three months since Godwin Uiald’s arrival in Windsor, Ont., but he still finds the orderliness of it all remarkable.
Sitting on a sunny bench on the sidewalk, the 43-year-old refugee claimant and former truck driver from Nigeria describes the chaotic roadways back home, waving his arms wildly and shaking his head. “Here,” he says, pointing to the cars passing in neat, careful rows, “I love the rules and regulations.”
Wearing a ball cap and a blue NHL-branded zip-up, he watches appraisingly while sipping a cup of tea. “Calm. Everything here is calm.”
Mr. Uiald, one of more than 1,400 asylum seekers sent to live in a shelter hotel in Windsor over the past year, paints a stark contrast to the situation just one year ago, when politicians and pundits warned that the sudden influx of asylum seekers to Canada had tipped over into a full-blown crisis – and that our immigration system was broken.
But there’s little sign of crisis in front of Windsor’s Best Western hotel on this afternoon. Mr. Uiald is Biafran, a group that has been persecuted in Nigeria since the 1960s as a result of its attempts to declare independence. Leaving his wife and kids behind, he landed at Toronto’s Pearson Airport in January and has been living at the hotel after being bussed to Windsor since shortly after his arrival.
Inside the Best Western, workers are wrapping up after serving lunch to the asylum seekers. Settlement workers sit at tables in the cafeteria, ready to connect them with employment and legal supports.
The lobby is quiet, save for a few American tourists looking up directions on their cellphones.
Nearly 40,000 asylum seekers crossed into Canada in 2022 to begin the process of applying for refugee protection. Many of them came via Roxham Road, a small rural crossing between Quebec and New York where migrants could walk in without the risk of being turned back by border officials.
The surge in irregular border crossings – caused in large part by a backlog created during the COVID-19 border closings – made headlines across the country, particularly after the Quebec government raised the alarm about the burden this placed on the province’s social services.
The federal government eventually shut down the Roxham Road crossing in March of last year. But by that point, communities across the country were already grappling with how to respond to the sudden increase of asylum seekers.
An RCMP officer directs migrants to a legal border station in 2017 after they crossed from Champlain, N.Y., via the Roxham Road route. A loophole in a Canada-U.S. border agreement made such crossings possible before the countries agreed to close it in 2023.Charles Krupa/The Associated Press
Officials in Toronto and Montreal said that their shelters and services were at capacity. Images from Toronto showed refugee claimants camped out in winter weather, on sidewalks and outside of shelters, turned away for lack of beds.
The process of applying for refugee protection can take years. If the claim is successful and a refugee is granted protected person status, they can apply to become a permanent resident. Those who are rejected can appeal the decision, or leave the country. As of last year, the average wait for a decision was 22 months. During that time, refugee claimants can apply for work permits – but that process itself can take months. While they wait, many asylum seekers have no choice but to rely on hotel shelters and other settlement supports.
When the federal government sent some asylum seekers from Toronto and Montreal to smaller cities, tensions with local communities built there, too. The City of Niagara Falls, with its population of 94,000, was particularly vocal about challenges it faced – and the pressures on its existing social services – as a result of the nearly 6,100 asylum seekers who had been bussed there.
The response in Windsor, however, has been more optimistic – mainly because it’s a larger city that received, in comparison, a smaller number of asylum seekers (1,400, for a city of about 230,000). As of this week, 421 hotel rooms in Windsor were being leased by the federal government.
But also, the work of resettling newcomers “is nothing new to this region,” says Rima Nohra, manager of the Settlement Workers in School program at Windsor’s New Canadians Centre for Excellence. “It’s a well-oiled machine. Everybody knows what they’re doing,” she said.
More than 23 per cent of Windsor’s population was foreign-born as of 2021, according to Statistics Canada. The majority of immigrants have come from Iraq (9.6 per cent), the United States (6.9 per cent), India (6.5 per cent), Italy (5.8 per cent) and Lebanon (5.1 per cent). A number of newcomers have been refugees: from Vietnam, and more recently, Afghanistan and Syria.
A sign for the city of Windsor placed beside the E.C. Row Expressway, is photographed on Nov. 25, 2023.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Last January, even before the first bus of migrants had arrived, planning had begun in Windsor. A group convened by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada – settlement organizations, school boards, health units and city officials – began weekly Zoom meetings.
As the first busload of asylum seekers arrived, local school boards had already set up tables inside the hotels to register children. Translators and settlement workers identified themselves by wearing bright blue shirts. And school officials walked the families through their new routines – where to wait for the school bus each morning, where to get bagged lunches provided by settlement workers, and where the parents would pick their children up at the end of the day. They helped families to find car seats and winter coats.
“Many came with nothing,” said Heather Anger, an ESL teacher-consultant with the school board. “Little T-shirts, from Nigeria. In the winter.”
Legal Assistance of Ontario, too, set up directly inside the hotels. So did staff at the Windsor Essex Community Health Centre, who brought a mobile health unit to the hotel. When, in one of the larger planning meetings, settlement workers mentioned the large number of asylum seekers who were pregnant, the health unit began offering prenatal care services.
It was a group effort, said Fred Francis, executive director of the Multicultural Council of Windsor. “Obviously, there was a need,” said Mr. Francis, who is also a local city councillor. “We had the expertise, and we have the staff to do what we can with the resources we have.”
The idea that our immigration system is dysfunctional, said Ms. Nohra, doesn’t align with her experience. She’s an immigrant who came to Windsor from Lebanon in 1999. “I don’t think it’s broken,” she said. Her work is rewarding, she says, because you can see the results immediately. “Children in schools. That person got a job. That person enrolled in language training.”
Asylum seekers at the Best Western are learning to adapt to a country where they hope to stay on a more permanent basis. 'Where in the world would we get this kind of support?' says Charles Kafuuma, a Ugandan newcomer.Dax Melmer/The Globe and Mail
At the Best Western, Mr. Uiald’s days have now fallen into a predictable routine. Each morning, he volunteers with the local Habitat for Humanity, helping to load supplies onto trucks. And in the afternoons, he attends English classes.
“I’m learning to behave like a Canadian,” he said. “They’ve treated me well.”
Charles Kafuuma, another asylum seeker, who has been at the hotel for six months now, feels the same way. He and his wife flew from Uganda to Toronto, and then were bussed to Windsor.
Mr. Kafuuma said he learned about Canada before coming here. He read about the Prairies – “famous for wheat growing” – and Niagara Falls, “the honeymoon capital of the world.” Windsor was never mentioned in those study guides.
Still, he’s happy that this is where they’ve landed.
“It’s a quiet city. It’s nice,” he said. Toronto now seems too crowded, he says, and competitive. He said, over and over again, that he has nothing to complain about.
“Where in the world would we get this kind of support?” he said. “It’s very, very, very good.”
Fred Francis is executive director of the Multicultural Council of Windsor, one of the groups helping newcomers get by in the city.Dax Melmer/The Globe and Mail
There have been, of course, challenges. Mr. Francis’s organization – as with many of the other settlement groups – is funded to help with government-sponsored refugees, and not necessarily asylum seekers. And while government funding was increased slightly last year to help accommodate for this, he said it’s so far been a temporary measure. “Whereas I think we had essentially one employee, now we might have two to three or 3½ employees for asylum seekers.”
To fill in the gaps, churches and other charities and non-profits have all had to use their resources to chip in.
And though many refugee claimants are eligible for legal aid, there are nowhere near enough immigration lawyers in Windsor to support all of them, said Shelley Gilbert, interim executive director of Legal Assistance of Windsor.
“We’re looking for counsel all the way to Toronto to assist people who are living here,” she said.
Although Windsor’s relative affordability is often cited as a draw for newcomers, there are still major challenges. Windsor’s unemployment rate is comparable to Toronto’s, topping 7 per cent. Fortunately, jobs in the city’s major industries – manufacturing and automotive assembly – typically come with fewer barriers to entry. Settlement workers often connect asylum seekers with job training, and help with the employment search too.
In the meantime, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment here is $1,500 a month, and the monthly shelter allowance from Ontario Works provides just $390. Many of the asylum seekers simply can’t afford to leave the hotels.
So far, the government has not announced any end date for funding temporary shelter for asylum seekers, but for new arrivals, it’s not an ideal living situation.
“Housing people in the hotel for long periods of time – although wonderful to be able to do,” Ms. Gilbert said, “does not promote that ongoing community building and settlement that we really want.”
Still, she and many others all echoed the same sentiment: When there’s a will, there’s a way. “Canada can take newcomers,” said Ms. Gilbert, explaining that there is capacity but that ideally there would also be predictable, long-term funding.
And Mr. Uivald is glad for it. He wants to get his work permit soon, and eventually bring his family from Nigeria. “I can’t sit here like this, giving me money, giving me food, I don’t like it,” he said. “I need to work. I am strong.”
He’d like to train as a forklift operator. But he’s not picky. “As long as I’m getting money, can feed my family, can live my own life,” he said, “I can do anything.”
Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
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