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Quebec’s prime minister wants a new migration deal with the U.S. He wants it badly. He wants the Canadian prime minister to negotiate. The prime minister? They want it too.
It is a key political priority and a major federal-provincial irritant, with Canada looking to slow the flow of migrants from the US at unofficial entry points, such as the controversial one on Roxham Road, south of Montreal.
There is one small problem. America wants to speak here.
For years, the U.S. has been paying close attention to the topic, and this week offered a public — and rare — insight into the American perspective.
Newsflash: A country that handles millions of migrants every year is in no rush to take in thousands of Canadians.
US Ambassador David Cohen toward CBC News irregular crossings into Quebec are symptomatic of broader global migration challenges; and they prefer to deal with the problem, not the symptom.
They won’t even acknowledge the countries that are talking about Canada’s desire to go beyond 2002 Safe Third County Agreement to facilitate the deportation of migrants who cross at regular checkpoints.
Talks with officials in both countries made it clear that no agreement would be reached. Whether President Joe Biden’s trip to Canada next month changes anything is an open question.
Two sources said that, so far, there have been constructive talks with US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but the issue is far from over.
This is the assessment in blunt language from an immigration expert in Washington, who also knows Canada very well.
“There is zero incentive for the United States to reopen Safe Third Countries now. Zero,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a senior adviser on immigration at the Washington Bipartisan Policy Center, who once led Homeland Security operations at the US embassy in Ottawa.
The federal government is facing significant pressure to close the irregular Roxham Road border crossing in Quebec that many migrants use to enter Canada from the United States.
‘Our house is on fire now’
In its current form, the Safe Third Country Agreement says asylum seekers who enter the US or Canada must make a claim in the first country they arrive at, but that only includes official points of entry.
Canada wants the agreement to extend across all borders, so it applies to migrants who use irregular entry points like the now-infamous Roxham Road.
To Canadians wondering why it took the United States years to prioritize the negotiations, Brown said: “Because our house is on fire right now on the other border.… I’m sorry.”
Just look at the two parallel shows that opened this week, in Canada and the U.S. They might as well be happening in the same universe.
Quebec Premier François Legault is getting a lot of attention at home for his letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and an op-ed in the Globe and Mail.
They said Quebec received 39,000 irregular crossers last year, and could not handle more, saying it was straining housing, hospital services, and language training.
He asked for money from Ottawa, said all future migrants should be sent to other provinces, and he called for a Safe Third Country deal with the US.
While its northern neighbor has asked the US to accept more migrants, the Biden administration has dropped plans to accept fewer, instead draft executive order.
The proposed rule would make it easier to quickly deport asylum seekers who try to enter the U.S. without scheduling an appointment on a mobile app, and seek asylum in Mexico.
That hardening attitude should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to developments in the US
In the middle of a world history surge in human displacement, migration has been perhaps the most explosive issue in American politics.
US border agents can be met more than three million migrants this year, higher than the record total in 2022.
That has fueled tensions in border communities like Yuma, Ariz., where agents encountered 300,000 migrants last year — triple the local population.
Arizona official on northern complaints: ‘A joke to me’
The head of the regional hospital in Yuma said that his staff had taken care of the migrants and that the cost of the organization was $20 million.
He said he laughed when he heard the northern states complain about migration: Denver and New Yorkfor example, they expressed a welcoming attitude and then announced that they were overwhelmed.
“It’s quite funny,” said Dr. Bob Trenschel.
“They all seem to have a conniption when they get two buses of migrants.… The mayor of New York squawking when they get two buses? That’s a joke to me.”
Now the mayor of New York, in fact, pay for the bus to bring migrants north, including to northern border communities who enter Canada on foot.
After the Canadian average about 10,000 refugee claims every year since 2017, this northern surge has added tens of thousands of new border crossers.
For comparison, the US can expect more asylum seekers from Russia alone; if the new rate continues, more than 60,000 Russians could seek asylum in the US this year.
Other countries have greater challenges. Take Colombia: now home to nearly 10 percent of Venezuela’s population, more than 2 million people who had run away.
An asylum-policy analyst in Washington said the issue of Canadian migration does not come up often in policy conversations there.
“It’s really not something that’s brought up very often,” said Susan Fratzke, a former State Department official and now a senior analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
“When it comes up, it’s always in reference to know that it’s a Canadian priority.”
He said that if a deal is reached, it may be part of a broader migration agreement and it may not be soon.
Watch Biden’s visit for development
American analysts of Canada-US relations are more optimistic.
He said that Biden has a desire to maintain good relations with Canada, which is evidenced by the problems that can be solved. electric vehicle incentives with Nexus trust-travel program.
That’s why, Chris Sands said, he wouldn’t be surprised if there were some developments next month when Biden visits Canada.
“It would be a wonderful announcement at an event like this,” said Sands, director of the Canada Institute at the WIlson Center in Washington. “It can be done if there are both sides.”
On Thursday, Trudeau said he had spoken directly with Biden about it and suggested it would be on the agenda for Biden’s visit to Canada.
One person familiar with the binational discussions said there was a shared desire to reach a deal, but working out the details was more complicated.
Sands agreed.
He said goodwill was not an issue. The problem, he said, is working with budgets and logistics, such as sorting out who handles responsibilities among several law enforcement and border agencies in the two countries.
“Anything you do for the Safe Third Country Agreement is … going to do very little about irregular migration,” said US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen. “If you’re serious about trying to tackle irregular migration, you have to tackle the underlying causes.”
Potential deal: Something bigger
So what will it take to get a deal?
In order to gain American interest, Brown said Canada must offer something unrelated, or related.
Maybe it’s like Canada’s main stabilizing role in Haiti, he said, or reducing the flow of Mexicans through Canada to Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, which U.S. officials say. say is an emerging trends.
He suggested one surprising way the Quebec premier could get Washington’s attention: accepting more U.S. milk imports, adding, “I’m just kidding.”
The US ambassador was clear in the CBC interview: the goal is a wider international migration plan.
Canada has, in fact, signed a hemispheric agreement where it is promised to take a leading role in several initiatives, one of which is the resettling of other French-speaking migrants, especially from Haiti.
Connecting the dots, Fratzke said that an agreement on this issue could be bigger, not just a one-issue deal on the Safe Third Country.
Two suggestions are offered: Canada can help build the capacity of other countries’ asylum systems, and can expand legal opportunities for economic migration.
The latter is also what Brown wants for the US.
He said that any solution must include the opportunity for people to apply legally, so that they have hope that official channels will work, for humanitarian and economic visas.
US, for example, resettling only a few hundred refugees every year lately from Latin America: “It’s crazy,” Brown said.
And for all the millions of migrants it receives, the percentage of people on US soil who were born abroad is not true that highabout the average among industrialized countries.
He said another part of the solution is more orderly enforcement. The asylum backlog is huge, and it takes an average of more than four years to decide a case.
Brown said applications should be processed quickly, deciding near the border.
In the meantime, he said, when the richer northern countries, like Canada, and the US, talk about limiting migration, they will push the burden south, to the poor countries, to places like Colombia, Central America and Mexico .
“That’s what we’re talking about,” he said.
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