Few irregular migrants have been deported from Canada

Multiple appeal possibilities, diplomatic difficulties and changing global circumstances mean that only a small portion of those who arrived in Canada from the United States between border points to seek asylum are deported if they do not get refugee status.

Posted on October 18, 2019 at 10:54 am

Stephanie Levitz
The Canadian Press

Statistics from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) show that as of September 27, 843 people had been deported from Canada and another 671 were waiting to be returned after exhausting all their options to remain in the country.

Since February 2017, approximately 45,000 people have applied for asylum in Canada after entering the country between two official border points.

Less than half of their asylum applications have been heard. The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) handles a historically high number of applications and the waiting time for decisions has increased significantly.

So far, according to the commission, 85% of those who refused their first asylum claim challenged decisions in the Appeal Division of the Commission.

This means that deportation procedures for 6600 or more people have been suspended.

"In a lot of cases, the agency is not in a position to initiate removal proceedings for other reasons," CBSA spokesperson Rebecca Purdy said in an email.

These include the right for some rejected asylum seekers to ask not to be deported on the pretext that they would be exposed to danger at home, and the current suspension of deportations to Haiti – No. 2 on the list of countries where do irregular migrants come from?

It can also be difficult to ensure that countries issue travel and identity documents to evicted persons.

For example, a 2018 CBSA internal report indicated that this was a problem for refugee claimants from Venezuela, which is in a state of turmoil.

"The deterioration of diplomatic relations can cause problems for evictions if Venezuelan nationals are not in possession of their travel documents after crossing (between border points)," the document says.

Canada closed its embassy in Venezuela earlier this year.

Both the Conservatives and New Democrats have been campaigning for the elections to address the border issue by amending an agreement with the United States that prohibits people from seeking asylum at official ports of entry between the two countries.

Both parties want to change the situation, but the opposite is true: the Conservatives want to ban asylum applications from irregular migrants, the NDP wants to allow them to simply apply at regular border points.

The Liberals said they discussed the safe third country agreement with the United States, but no new agreement has come to fruition. The party has expanded the rules for refugee claims and in the 2019 budget has also allocated millions of dollars to the IRB to help deal with the number of cases.

The Conservatives have also committed to hiring 250 additional CBSA officers to expel those deemed inadmissible in the country.