In a budget next week that’s dedicated to innovation, the federal government might want to set aside funds to fend off innovative immigration.
About 4,000 kilometres southwest of Ottawa, migrant shelters line the Mexico border where, Reuters reports, many of those now being deported from Trump’s America are plotting a Canadian invasion.
They’re telling reporters there’s no future trying to re-enter and stay in a hostile U.S.A.. Their Plan B is to beeline for Canada.
These could be dismissed as isolated or anecdotal experiences except the raw numbers suggest, and I apologize for this badly mixed metaphor, the canary is doing a swan song in the immigration coal mine.
Since Canada’s lifting of visa requirements for Mexicans four months ago, advice requests of immigration specialists and approved travel authorizations have tripled.
Flight bookings to Canada by Mexicans are up 90 per cent from a year ago although, to be fair, some of that could be from enhanced tourism.
Meanwhile, the calls for asylum-seeker assistance from Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister rate little more than a shrug from federal ministers waiting to see if there’s a wave developing before reacting.
Yet consider the advance warnings from the Immigration and Refugee Board. The chair says the board is funded and staffed to handle 17,000 asylum claims, but he anticipates double that number this year. In short order, wait times will double to eight months, giving illegal arrivals plenty of time to disappear into the underground, undocumented economy.
Like it or not, Canada has become a beacon for the poor, huddled masses from Mexico and elsewhere yearning for freedom, or at very least refuge from Donald Trump’s ongoing crackdown efforts.
The word is out and spreading that simply setting a foot on Canada soil is to reach the land of immigration opportunity, by legal or illegal means.
That’s not a bad thing for potentially productive arrivals.
But it’s a big problem if reports are true that Mexicans deported as undesirable by Trump are set to become Canada’s next immigration surge under Trudeau.
That suggests now is the time for government to deter illegal border jumpers with obstacles more durable than cold weather and snowdrifts.
That’s the Last Word…
