The premiers of British Columbia and Quebec, as well as the general people, are desperately trying to convince Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to abandon their open-door immigration policy.
Hard core reality is teaching Prime Minister Justin Trudeau some valuable lessons about flirting with the fantasy of virtually free borders. The same is true for Canada’s premiers and the general people. Especially in relation to asylum seekers.
For months, British Columbia Premier David Eby and Quebec Premier François Legault have been working tirelessly to convince Justin Trudeau and his childhood buddy, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, to abandon their open border policy.
Provincial premiers have attempted to educate Justin Trudeau about the financial costs of such grandstanding on asylum seekers. According to Statistics Canada, there are now 363,000 asylum claimants in the country, which is more than double the number two years ago.
Most claimants were strolling across the US border into Eastern Canada a few years ago, which US President Joe Biden helped tighten last year.
Claimants arrive at airports in Toronto, Montreal, and, to a lesser extent, Calgary and Vancouver, primarily from Asia. They enter legitimately on study or travel visas and then make their claims after leaving the airport, claiming they are fleeing various sorts of persecution.
Trudeau Governments Failure of Vetting
According to Anne Michèle Meggs, a former Quebec immigration official who now writes independently on the subject, the refugee board typically takes around two years to study backgrounds and rule on a case, and often more if there is an appeal.
According to Meggs, the average number of asylum claims lodged per month in British Columbia this year has risen to 640, up 37% from previous year. B.C. has the third highest influx of asylum seekers in the country. Most still go to Ontario, where average monthly claims have increased by 53%, or Quebec, where they are up 20%.
Canada’s premiers have been telling Trudeau for months that, regardless of the legitimacy of their claims, asylum seekers cost taxpayers a lot of money.
Most arrive with no money. While they wait for their cases to be reviewed to determine whether they will be granted coveted permanent resident status, federal and provincial organisations frequently provide social services such as shelter, food, clothes, health care, children’s education, and (in Quebec) creche.
Stories about an out-of-control refugee system are likely contributing to rapidly changing opinion survey results. Last week, Leger discovered that 60 percent of Canadians believe there are “too many” newcomers. This represents a significant increase from 35 percent in 2019.
It is the highest level of unhappiness in decades, owing in part to demand pressure on housing and infrastructure expenses. The negative polling results are constant among white and non-white Canadians.
Provinces Overloaded Under Funded
In response to protests from Quebec, Trudeau provided an additional $750 million this year to support refugee claims who came in recent years, primarily at the land border. Last year, Quebec handled 65,000 claims, while Ontario handled 63,000, with the greatest groups coming from Mexico and India.
But, as Eby tells anyone who will listen, B.C. has received no funding from Ottawa. The premier expressed how “frustrating” it is for B.C. to “scrabble around” for cash in the province, where housing is among the most expensive in the world, while Quebec receives more.
“Our most recent total for last year was 180,000 new British Columbians,” Eby said last month, including asylum seekers and all other international migrants to the province. “And that’s great and that’s exciting and it’s necessary, and it’s completely overwhelming.”
Eby made no public mention of the increasingly strange anomaly based on the three-decade-old Quebec Accord, which results in Quebec receiving ten times more funds than British Columbia and Ontario to settle newcomers each year.
According to Postmedia News, Metro Vancouver’s shelters are being overcrowded as the number of asylum applicants in British Columbia has nearly doubled in the last year.
Canada’s Immigration out of control
The Salvation Army, which operates 100 beds in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, reported that since last summer, the proportion of refugee claimants requesting shelter has increased to roughly 80%. Meanwhile, refugee claimants filled over 60% of the beds at the Catholic Charities Men’s Shelter in Vancouver. Taxpayers provide the majority of the funding for shelters.
According to Meggs, government figures reveal that British Columbia now has 16,837 asylum claimants. This excludes the 5,300 refugees who arrived in the province in a more organised manner last year, thanks to government assistance.
Meggs claims her “jaw dropped” when Trudeau stated in April that the number of temporary immigrants, including asylum seekers, was “out of control” and “growing at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.”
The cognitive dissonance, she noted, stems from Trudeau’s government’s complete responsibility for the system’s spiralling out of control since 2015, not just in terms of numbers, but also in selection criteria, or lack thereof.
Trudeau has confessed that pandemonium characterises the situation with international students, whose numbers have risen under his leadership to 1.1 million. Many people are now demanding asylum. B.C. has 217,000 international students in post-secondary institutions and 49,000 in kindergarten-to-Grade-12 programs.
Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland is among many who believe it would be preferable if Canada processed roughly 50,000 refugee claims every year, as it lacks the absorptive capacity for more — such as the 144,000 who applied last year.
One major issue, according to Kurland, is that the government knows very little about many asylum seekers. The immigration department’s ignorance stems in part from the fact that many people file claims online. Officials don’t even know where tens of thousands of people reside. Source: The Sun
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