People trying to enter Canada will be arrested and may be sent back to the United States. Some people fear that migrants will be “detained automatically” after being deported south of the border, says McGill University law professor specializing in human rights Pearl Eliadis. “But for the moment, we are really in a void in terms of details,” adds the director of the Canadian Observatory on Crises and Humanitarian Action at UQAM, François Audet.
Yes. Unaccompanied minor children and migrants who have family established in Canada will not be returned to the United States. “It becomes complicated to demonstrate family ties at the border post for populations who often have very few official papers. It takes us to very slippery ground,” notes Mr. Audet, however.
Possibly. However, this implies that migrants who have entered Canada illegally “will have to hide” for the first two weeks, says Mr. Audet. “It will put in a very difficult position already vulnerable populations who will surely see in this a little terrorizing effect. At the moment, in terms of reception, although it was far from perfect, no one was in handcuffs,” he said.
” I’m worried. We will reach 15,000 people in April. What will happen with all the others who won’t have access to it? asks Mr. Audet. By 2022, almost 40,000 migrants had taken the Roxham Road. “And the current numbers put us at almost 50,000 this year,” he adds.
Yes. It is impossible to physically prevent people from crossing any other point on the border, Eliadis said. “It is to be expected that there will be other small Roxham paths that will appear or other places that will be clandestine channels,” adds Mr. Audet, who expects to see some appear “in the coming weeks. or in the next few months.” Without Roxham Road, “we will favor the black market, which will perhaps favor black work or black lodging. These populations will therefore have even more difficulty integrating and will be even more vulnerable to violations of their rights,” he said.
Since 2004, a person who wants to obtain refugee status in Canada or the United States must submit their request in the first of the two countries where they set foot. This “Safe Third Country Agreement” only applied to border crossings, airports and train arrivals. To get around it, thousands of asylum seekers therefore took irregular passages, such as Roxham Road. However, since Friday, this agreement applies to the entire land border. This change now allows authorities to turn away people passing through Roxham Road.
“There is a lot of concern right now. People are in the void. Right now, thousands of people are migrating, and there is a big question mark ahead of them,” says Audet. The specialist wants the government to be much clearer in its next messages. “You have to reach out to migrant populations so that they don’t travel thousands of kilometers for nothing,” he says.
“The Roxham Road is a small problem in an international crisis,” says Eliadis. According to the human rights specialist, the closure of this passage is a “lack of generosity and understanding”. “There is no one who wants to leave their country, their family, their job and their surroundings,” she said. People come because they perceive they have no choice. »
