U.S. Republicans are now warning: Migration from Canada is a problem

A group of Republican lawmakers say it’s time to protect the border. No, not that limit. The other, in the northern part of the United States. That many Americans forget.

The focus: the border with Canada.

The northern border has traditionally been in American politics, comfortably behind the debate over the Mexican border.

More than two dozen Republicans are on a mission to change that, and they held a news conference outside the Capitol on Tuesday.

He announced the creation of a new northern border security caucus, with the goal of bringing attention to the perennially neglected border with Canada.

The creation was part of a reality check on American political attitudes.

Canadians are well aware of the surge in migration in the north, with people crossing into Canada from Roxham Road in Quebec, spurring Ottawa to seek a new migration pact with the US.

Less noticed is the exponential surge in migration by other means.

These American politicians want more people to know that there is a historic increase from Canada involving foreign migrants entering the US, and that even Canadians with criminal records are trying to sneak in undetected.

One speaker after another admitted that the scale of this challenge is minuscule compared to the border with Mexico, but said it is time to pay attention.

The group’s wish list remains unclear, but what they clearly want is more surveillance technology, and more agents, which means more jobs in their border districts.

‘We are under attack’

“We’re under attack because we don’t have borders,” said Ryan Zinke, a congressman from Montana who served briefly in Trump’s cabinet.

“This is a national security issue and the northern level has its own challenges.”

Tuesday’s events shed light on the challenges on all sides: for this particular group of politicians, for the US and Canada.

Limited interest in Canadian migration was evident inside and outside the US Capitol on Tuesday.

No American journalists showed up to ask any questions at the outdoor press conference.

The only question is from a Canadian journalist, and it’s about how countries can work together on migration.

That’s not what some politicians say.

After several such questions, the most senior politician there, House Republican No.

It’s the same theme inside the Capitol first hearing the new Republican majority on the House homeland security committee.

The hearing was about the consequences for countries across the border, with migrants and drugs spilling into each country.

In this border hearing, Canada didn’t even think about it.

This was made clear when a witness from Michigan shared a heartbreaking story about two of his sons being killed by fentanyl pills.

The chairman of the committee, Mark Green, pointed out: “You’re in Michigan. … It’s a long way from the border.”

In fact, the witness, Rebecca Kiessling, a conservative activist, lives in Rochester Hills, Mich., a 40-minute drive from Canada in moderate Detroit traffic.

This is because the border, in US political parlance, the “in” border is almost always one about a 24-hour drive south of Kiessling’s home, to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

This northern conservative group wants to change that. Fox News and other US stores, in fact, write about massive surge in migration from Canada.

A real increase.

The new trend

Statistics from US Customs and Border Protection show exponential growth in migration from Canada, with more than 55,000 meet in the first four months of this fiscal year – nearly eight times the 2021 level.

Those encounters can include anything from arrests to asylum claims, and they have disproportionately involved citizens of India, Mexico and Canada.

At the new pace, there will be almost 170,000 such encounters on the northern border this year, which, for context, is barely five percent of the comparable number for the southern border with Mexico, which is trending towards three million encounters.

But these lawmakers want Americans to know about drugs like that fentanyl and cocaine also come through Canada, although in smaller numbers.

“These numbers are shocking. And unanswerable,” said Rep. Lisa McClain, Republican of Michigan.

“We are here today to say, ‘We have a problem. Let’s work together to fix it.'”

What they want is better technology for communication and detection, of the kind that is more often deployed on the southern border.

They also want more border agents.

One Republican from Texas told of meeting a border agent in his district who had been reassigned — five times — from his normal posting up north.

Lawmakers spread the statistics: nearly 10 percent of U.S. border patrol agents are stationed along the Canadian border.

New York Republican Nick Longworthy said parts of the state were left behind because the border agency was underfunded and struggling.

“The source of the border patrol of the district [are] trying to put a tourniquet on the gushing crisis on the southern border,” he said.

Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota said Canadians are also frustrated. They say the Biden administration is allowing illegal movement, while blocking legal movement and trade with its ongoing vaccine mandate for travel and denying the Keystone XL pipeline.

There was no Canada-bashing on the show.

Some speakers cited, as a contributing factor to the phenomenon, Canada’s more permissive policies, such as visa-free travel for Mexicans and less stringent student visa rules.

He suggested that people who cannot enter the US legally have an incentive to travel to Canada and try to enter illegally.

One border-union official at the event called it tragic case involving a family of four from India last year: Father asked for a Canadian student visa, and the whole family subsequently froze to death while trying to walk to the US from Manitoba.

What does this mean for Canada?

There is no guarantee that this political effort will affect Canada.

But it’s a sign of the political pressure Biden faces at home on immigration — as Canada calls for more migrants.

The governments of Canada and Quebec are pushing for an expansion of the Canada-US Safe Third Countries Agreement.

But the US ambassador to Ottawa, in a recent interview with CBC News, not willing even admitting the countries that discussed it.

One Washington-based immigration expert, Theresa Cardinal Brown, told CBC News in the US have no political appetite to take this issue now.

However, in the same interview, Cardinal Brown also said that, perhaps, the surge in migration from Canada creates an incentive for the US to talk.

“This could be the basis for a conversation,” said Brown, an immigration analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

WATCH | What drives migrants to Canada:

The U.S. has ignored the northern border since the post-9/11 era, when concerns about terrorist movements dominated Canada-U.S. conversations and led to security measures that reduced travel.

Canadian officials and diplomats usually like it that way.

Then again, this presents a new argument for Canada. When Biden arrived in Ottawa, Canadian friends could make a new offer for a migration deal, arguing that it would help both countries control irregular entry, because he told the president: Let’s make a deal.