Michael Barutciski teaches at the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs at York University. He was previously fellow in law at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre.
Donald Trump appears to be serious about his campaign commitment to carry out mass deportations, and neighbouring Canada now has to prepare for the inevitable effects. But the real danger is not that U.S. authorities will send migrants across their northern land border – it is that the incoming U.S. administration’s threats of deportation will push many migrants to take matters into their own hands by seeking refuge in Canada.
This resembles the dynamic that sparked the Roxham Road crisis eight years ago. A month before Mr. Trump first took office, migrants with precarious legal status in the U.S. began streaming across an unofficial crossing in upstate New York into Quebec, and were allowed to claim asylum in Canada.
Ottawa’s initial reactions to Mr. Trump’s latest challenge gives Canadians reasons to be worried.
The Immigration and Refugee Board is already overwhelmed with a record number of backlogged asylum claims. Nobody has been reassured by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s vague references to a “plan” on which she is working with several cabinet ministers, or her insistences that the Liberal government takes the border “very very seriously.” Yet the legal constraints are rather limited if the government were to only focus on communicating that claimants will be refused. The Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which was amended last year under Joe Biden, allows Canadian authorities to send back asylum claimants who cross anywhere along the land border. The Supreme Court also unanimously rejected the long-standing activist argument that it is unsafe to return them to the United States by upholding the STCA’s constitutionality.
If we agree that creating false expectations for these “irregular crossings” would be inhumane, then it should be made clear we will not be shepherding migrants through the border or integrating them, as we did years ago with those who came through Roxham Road. The RCMP should also not be explaining that it is “powerless to send people back who cross the border to claim asylum,” or that it would transport claimants to a central facility. Yet this kind of ambiguous messaging persists at the highest levels.
After years of defending the leniency at Roxham Road, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is now claiming that migrants who used the crossing were abusing Canada’s asylum system (doing so in a French-language YouTube video on immigration, but curiously, not in the English version). Likewise, Immigration Minister Marc Miller recently explained that the government will not be pursuing a mass regularization of the “undocumented” migrants already in the country, but nonetheless claimed they “continue to be Canadian, except for everything but in name.” Mr. Miller’s claim that he is willing to have “tough conversations” about U.S. deportations is thus not reassuring.
In addition to communicating a clear strategy on border control, the government needs to signal its determination to actually enforce the rules. More resources for the RCMP would allow a greater presence in border regions. This deterrent factor would help prevent migrants from using a remaining loophole in the revised STCA which would allow those who enter illegally and stay undetected for 14 days to file an asylum claim.
Canadians need to understand that a stricter approach will require deeper collaboration with the U.S. The longer-term interests of both countries converge here because of their mutual interest in border integrity. We should not forget that collaborating on strict rules during the pandemic led to a dramatic drop in illegal crossings at Roxham Road.
The incoming U.S. administration will be fully aware of a new immigration problem on their northern border: an explosion in illegal southbound crossings, including alleged terrorists. An increased RCMP presence on the Canadian side would not only help prevent illegal crossings in both directions, it would help Ottawa negotiate the removal of the 14-day loophole in the STCA. Proof that the Trudeau government can help Washington address the migration problems at the U.S.-Mexico border, as it did when it negotiated an extension to cover illegal crossings with the Biden administration, would give it leverage in any potential deal.
The U.S. immigration system has been broken for decades, so it should not surprise Ottawa if a new disruptive White House attempts to force change with dramatic methods, including mass deportations. Canada, then, needs to rethink its own approach to border control and to reconceive immigration policy within a continental co-operation framework. Just as with free trade, Ottawa should focus its diplomatic efforts on increasing collaboration with the U.S. – otherwise, there is a real risk that the immigration file will turn into a source of tension between two long-time allies that share the world’s longest undefended border.