Canada’s imaginary migrant crisis

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on July 21, 2018.

You may have read recently about Canada’s alleged “crisis” of “illegal immigration.”

Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel, the shadow minister for citizenship and immigration, has been tweeting non-stop about the current government’s supposed “inability to manage Canada (sic) borders.”

The problem is that the Tories are deliberately conflating “asylum seekers” with “illegal immigrants,” which are by no means synonymous.

The Conservatives this past week deleted a tweet showing a picture of a black man with a suitcase over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tweet after Trump’s Muslim ban that “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith.”

It seems more likely that asylum seekers are crossing from the U.S. as a result of Trump’s hardline anti-immigration policies and fear of what may happen to them if they return to their country of origin, rather than a tweet by the prime minister.

People have a right under both Canadian and international law to seek asylum from persecution. This is not the same as illegal immigration, since it’s not illegal, although asylum seekers may not have gone through official border crossings. The Tories have seized upon this technicality to make it appear as if we’re being invaded by criminals.

The migrants showing up on our side of the border are a result President Donald Trump’s demonization of foreigners, as well as Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s barbaric policy of separating migrant children from their parents.

Still, the amount of monthly asylum claims has decreased to 1,263 claims in June 2018 from 1,869 the month prior, according to Immigration Canada, which doesn’t appear to be a crisis.

Although the Tories aren’t advocating the creation of an ICE-style deportation force to separate migrant families as a deterrent, they’re still drumming up Trump-style race-based immigration fears.

Many of these claimants come originally from impoverished countries, such as Haiti and Nigeria, which critics say are not at war and therefore not valid for asylum claims.

No doubt some of these claims will turn out to be bogus, but these people have a right to be heard. We can’t just assume these migrants are all cheating the system.

Trudeau took the Conservative opposition’s bait with his cabinet shuffle last week, placing former Toronto chief of police Bill Blair in charge of a new cabinet position as minister of border security and organized crime reduction.

It’s worth noting that Blair was in charge of Toronto police during the 2010 G20 summit, when 1,000 protesters were arrested, mostly without charges.

This is clearly an effort by Trudeau to signal that he’s going to take a tougher approach to the border in the lead-up to the 2019 election.

Rempel took to Twitter to congratulate Trudeau on having finally seen the light, which shows that the Conservative tail is wagging the Liberal dog on this issue, which doesn’t bode well for the Liberals’ electoral prospects.

Ultimately, Trudeau must show leadership and pick a side.

Either Canada’s doors are open to people fleeing persecution in the U.S. and elsewhere, or they’re not.

He’s in a position to provide a stark contrast with the darkness of Trump’s U.S., an opportunity he appears to have squandered to score electoral points with people who are unlikely to vote for him anyway.