The immigration agreement announced Friday by US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau aims to end a process that has allowed tens of thousands of migrants from around the world to cross the border between the two countries on foot. the state of New York and the province of Quebec.
Since the morning of 2017, these migrants have entered Canada via Roxham Road outside Champlain, New York, where a Royal Canadian Mounted Police checkpoint was set up to chase them about 5 miles from the official border crossing where they would force them to return to the United States. City
The agents warn that if they go any further they will be arrested. They do so, and without handcuffs, the processing officials send them back to Canada, where they are processed for asylum while they live, which often takes years.
The new policy states that any asylum seeker who is not a US or Canadian citizen and is caught in transit within 14 days is returned across the border. It will take place shortly after midnight on Saturday, a swift execution designed to prevent an onslaught of asylum seekers trying to cross.
“Starting at midnight today (this Saturday) . . . those who try to cross irregularly will be returned to the next crossing point with the United States of America. This will make it possible to deter illegal migration at the border while increasing legal migration,” said Trudeau in a press conference with Biden.
“We are expanding the Third Safe Country Agreement to apply not only at designated ports of entry, but across the entire land border, including at inland waterways, to ensure equitable and more orderly migration between our two countries,” Canada’s announcement.
Canada also agreed to allow 15,000 migrants to “on a humanitarian basis from the Western Hemisphere per year, with a path to economic opportunities to address forced displacement, as an alternative to irregular migration.”
Some of the last migrants to do so were about eight people from two families, one from Haiti and one from Afghanistan, who arrived on Roxham Road shortly after dawn on Friday. They both said they had to go around the roads to get there.
Gerson Solay 28. Bianca carried her daughter to the border. He said he did not have the necessary documents to stay in the United States.
“Why is Canada the last destination,” he said before being taken into custody to face charges.
The agreement was announced as the US Border Patrol responds to a sharp increase in illegal crossings, in this case from north to south, along the rare Canadian border. Almost all of them occur in northern New York and Vermont, along a stretch of border close to Canada’s two largest cities: Toronto and Montreal.
Although the numbers remain small compared to the US-Mexico border, the crossings have become so frequent that the Border Patrol is sending more personnel to the region and migrants to Vermont with times before authorities appear.
The Canadian authorities are struggling with the problem in early 2017. Many northern migrants say they fled President Donald Trump’s immigration measures, which were hostile to their presence in the country and remain in place under his successor.
These migrants have the benefit of a 2002 agreement between the United States and Canada, under which asylum seekers file their claims in the first country they arrive. Migrants are told at the official crossing to return to the United States, but those who have arrived in Canada can stay through any other port of entry and apply for protection.
Meanwhile, the migrants traveling south are overwhelming the US authorities.
Border Patrol agents made 628 apprehensions of migrants entering Canada legally in February, five times the number at the same time a year earlier. Those numbers are almost nothing compared to those on the southern border, where more than 220,000 arrests were made in December, but in percentage terms they are a huge increase.
In the Swanton Sector of the Border Patrol, which covers New Hampshire, Vermont and part of New York, agents in February saw a tenth more than the previous year. About half of those coming from Canada are Mexicans who do not need a visa to fly to Canada.
The police officers of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, a town located 6,000 hours from the border, advised public authorities to unload the migrant patrol from the first minute notices into the town’s reception center. This same thing had happened several times in the last few weeks.
The Customs and Protection (CBP) office said the migrants transported to St. Johnsbury were prohibited from entering the United States without authorization and notified when they had to appear at an immigration hearing.
In St. They dropped in Johnsbury because it has a bus station from where they can travel to the larger city.
“In these circumstances, CBP works with local authorities to ensure the safety of all concerned, residents and migrants, and to ensure the stability of the population’s resources,” the statement said.
But local authorities said no time had been given to prepare. They are now setting up a system to provide migrants with the services they need.
On Thursday, the Haitian couple and their children, boys aged 17 and 9, and a girl of 15, were brought to the reception center. The family, who did not want to give their names, wanted to take the car to Miami.
They said they had been in Canada for two months, but refused to reveal their reasons for traveling.
They did not take the coach on Thursday that would take them to connect with Boston, from where they would continue their journey to Miami. The local group of volunteers got food and overnight accommodation.
Police Chief Tim Page said St. Johnsbury is willing to help migrants, but not at a rush hour.
“We’re deciding what we’re going to do when these families come in,” he said. “We don’t have a plan yet, but with this I’m sure it will go better,” he concluded.
