Nothing illegal in seeking asylum

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/03/2017 (3394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tom Denton, Winnipeg’s godfather of refugee sponsorship, has been depressed lately.

Part of it may have to do with a recent poll that suggests Canadians may not be as welcoming to a certain type of refugee. At least, not as welcoming as he believes and commonly sees in his work. Then there are the letters he’s been receiving every day for years from people in African refugee camps who are begging for his help.

“I’ve got two today,” he said Tuesday when I dropped by his office in an old house on Pacific Avenue, which was donated by a former refugee who now owns it and the gas bar next door.  

Often, the heartbreaking letters are addressed directly to the 82-year-old head of the private refugee sponsor operation known as Hospitality House.

“I probably get 1,000 a year.”

Then there are the refugees who are here and still want his help.

“You can’t imagine how depressing, how wearing it is on your soul, to have people coming into this office every day,” Denton says. 

“Every day,” he repeats.

“Asking them to rescue their families because they think you can. But it’s a government-controlled program and you can’t. There’s nothing you can do.”

All of this suggests why I wanted to talk to Denton about what’s been going on in Emerson, the border town the Washington Post recently referred to as having emerged “as a front line in the fallout from the (Trump) administration’s travel ban and aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.” That being a reference to all those asylum seekers bypassing the legal border port of entry and crossing into Canada from the United States in often dark and dangerous winter conditions.

Jumping the queue, as some see it, and bypassing Denton’s own list of thousands who keep hoping to be officially processed and approved overseas, but have to wait years — if their lucky numbers ever comes up, that is.

So what does Denton think of those who take the road less travelled on their way to Canada?

The 161 people who crossed near Emerson in January and February, for example, and all the hundreds of others across the country who are landing in Canada before they are processed and certified as refugees.

I’m asking for Denton’s opinion now because of that opinion poll that was taken this month when yet another group of migrants, including a pregnant woman and a year-old child, was discovered by firefighters huddled in a storage shed near Emerson.

The poll, released Monday by Reuters Ipsos, found that nearly half of the Canadians surveyed — 48 per cent — agree that, when it comes to those who cross illegally, Canada should “send these migrants back to the U.S.”

Only 36 per cent of respondents said we should accept the same migrants.

The Reuters story reported “support for deportations was strongest among men, adults lacking a college degree, people who are older and those with higher levels of income.”

It also quoted Emerson-Franklin Reeve Greg Janzen.

“There are so many people in the world who want to come in and go through the right channels,” he reportedly said. “That’s what’s pissing most people off. These guys are jumping the border.”

“First of all,” Denton says when I bring up the poll, “you wonder how it was framed.”

Turns out the poll might have been better if it had offered a third option, the one that actually happens in a legal way.

Once inside Canada, there’s a process that will allow some — those whose refugee claims stand up to scrutiny — to stay after they appear at hearings conducted by a member of the independent Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. The board will send others back to the U.S.

The problem is those two all-or-nothing options from the poll don’t apply in reality or in law.

The fully legal refugee board process is part of the reason Denton rejects the term “illegal” migrants.

It’s why he isn’t upset they’re crossing our land borders and not stopping at the official port of entry that would reject them because of Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement that compels border agents to turn asylum seekers back if they have requested refugee protection in the U.S.

The Canadian Council for Refugees, Denton points out, has been leading a campaign to get the word “illegal” dropped when it comes to asylum seekers bypassing ports of entry and crossing through open fields.

Denton argues those asylum seekers are not any more “illegal” than the ones flying from Europe who land at the Toronto airport, declare themselves as refugees, and are detained, screened, processed and most often passed along to the Immigration and Refugee Board to have their claims heard. 

That, Denton says, goes on every day; not just in Toronto, but in other major Canadian overseas flight destinations such as Montreal and Vancouver. In fact, both historic and more recent statistics from the Canadian Border Service Agency back that up.

During the first two months of 2017, approximately 525 asylum seekers declared themselves at Canadian airports, most of them — about 400 — at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

As of the end of February, nearly 3,000 asylum seekers had arrived in Canada via land, air and water, among them the much-written- and talked-about 1,134 apprehended between entry points by the RCMP. 

So, apart from the recent spike in U.S.-Canada land crossings that has some people so engaged in the subject of legal versus illegal migrants, there’s nothing new about what’s going on.

It makes me wonder what would happen if Canada dispensed with its agreement with the U.S., and refugees were allowed to declare themselves at our land border crossings, much the same way they do at airports.

What if their crossing into Canada was through a legal port of entry such as the one near Emerson?

Would almost half of Canadians polled, given the same options, still say “send them back”?

I suspect they’d be still be saying “yes.”

Even if Tom Denton, who has such faith in our Canadian goodness, would prefer to think otherwise.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca