Vermont’s St. Johnsbury — With the agreement on immigration announced on Friday by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden, a process that has let tens of thousands of immigrants travel between the two countries on a backroad between New York state and Quebec will be stopped.
Since the beginning of 2017, there have been so many people crossing into Canada via Roxham Road near Champlain, New York, that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has established a processing facility for them that is less than five miles (8 km) from the official border crossing where they would be sent back to the United States. Although Mounties had warned them that they would be detained, they were given permission to stay in Canada and pursue their cases, which can take years to resolve.
According to the new regulations, anyone seeking asylum who does not possess U.S. or Canadian citizenship and is apprehended within 14 days of crossing the border will be turned back. According to Canadian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the agreement in advance, it was scheduled to go into effect a minute after midnight on Saturday. This speedy implementation was done to prevent a sudden influx of people trying to claim refugee status.
To make sure that travel between our two countries is fair and runs smoothly, Canada said it would expand the Safe Third Country Agreement so that it applies at authorized ports of entry and all along the land border, including on internal waterways.
The Western Hemisphere’s 15,000 migrants will be permitted to apply “on a humanitarian basis from Canada over the year, with a path to economic opportunities to address forced displacement, as an alternative to irregular migration,” according to the agreement.
About eight people in two families, one from Haiti and the other from Afghanistan, were among the last migrants to pass through, and they arrived at the American end of Roxham Road shortly after dawn on Friday. Both claimed to have traveled around to get there.
A loophole in a 2002 agreement between the United States and Canada.
The 28-year-old Gerson Solay carried Bianca to the border. He said he needed more papers to continue living in the U.S.
Before he was hauled into prison for processing, he said, “That is why Canada is my last destination.
The agreement occurs as the U.S. Border Patrol reacts to a sharp rise in unauthorized southbound crossings along the open Canadian border. Nearly all occur at the section of the border closest to Toronto and Montreal, Canada’s two largest cities, in northern New York and Vermont.
It’s unknown how Roxham Road became a popular route, but it can be reached in a short taxi ride from the point where Interstate 87 approaches the Canadian border, and for migrants traveling south, it’s a short trip to New York City.
Even though the number is still small compared to the U.S.-Mexico border, the Border Patrol has added more people to the area and started letting some migrants into Vermont with a date to meet with immigration officials.
Since early 2017, Canadian officials have needed help managing this. Many migrants traveling northward claimed they left because they believed President Donald Trump’s immigration policies would be unfriendly to their stay in the country. Since the Biden administration took office, the process has continued.
These immigrants have taken advantage of a loophole in a 2002 agreement between the United States and Canada, which states that asylum applicants must do so in the nation they first enter. Those who cross into Canada legally are sent back to the United States and instructed to apply there. However, persons who enter Canada outside of a port of entry can stay and ask for protection.
Southbound migrants are currently putting a burden on American border personnel.
U.S. Border Patrol authorities apprehended 628 illegal immigrants from Canada in February, which is more than five times as many as at the same time last year. Even though those figures pale compared to the number of migrants arriving from Mexico, where more than 220,000 were apprehended in just December, there has been a significant improvement in percentage terms.
Agents in the Swanton Sector of the Border Patrol, which includes parts of upstate New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, stopped migrants 418 times in February, an increase of more than ten times over the same month last year. Mexican citizens, who can fly to Canada from Mexico without a visa, make up around half of those coming from Canada.
The police chief of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, which has a population of 6,000 and is about an hour south of the border, informed state authorities that the Border Patrol had unexpectedly dropped off a vanload of immigrants at the town’s welcome center. The same event has occurred multiple times in the previous few weeks.
The migrants who were let off in St. Johnsbury, according to a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, had been detained along the border after entering the country illegally. They were given the notice to appear for further immigration proceedings.
Because St. Johnsbury has a bus terminal where migrants can board a bus to a bigger city, they were left there.
According to the statement, “in such cases, USBP collaborates with local communities to ensure the safety of all parties—both community members and migrants—as well as the stability in the community’s resources.”
They claimed to have been in Canada for two months but did not discuss what had led them to continue traveling.
But according to local officials, they needed to be given more time to plan. State officials are currently setting up a mechanism to offer any services that migrants might need.
A Haitian couple and their three children—two boys, ages 17 and 9, and a girl, 15—were dropped off at the welcome center on Thursday. The family, who wanted to remain anonymous, desired to board a bus for Miami.
They claimed to have been in Canada for two months but did not discuss what had led them to continue traveling.
They missed the bus on Thursday that would have let them connect to one in Boston from which they could board another bus to Miami. A group of neighborhood volunteers spent the day providing food, helping them locate lodging for the night, and setting up transportation for them to catch the bus on Friday.
St. Johnsbury wants to assist these migrants, but not immediately, according to police chief Tim Page.
To know what to do when these families arrive, he stated, “We need to write something down.” “This will all go a little smoother when we have a system set up,” someone said.
SOURCE – (AP)
