Juno News - September 11, 2018Thousands of rejected illegal border-crossers still in Canada
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Summary
Andrew Lutton and Andrew Zakiya Chaudhuri discuss the surge in illegal border crossers, and the government's handling of the situation, and why it may not be as bad as it seems. They're joined by Andrew Lutton of the True North Initiative, and Andrew Choudhuri of the Toronto Star.
Transcript
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That was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's giant welcome sign
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to what would eventually become tens of thousands of illegal border crossers.
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Now, it's only been since last April, so a year and a few months ago,
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that the federal government started tracking what has now been over 32,000 illegal border crossers
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just walking into Canada, despite the act that basically says
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if you're in the United States, you can't seek asylum in Canada
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Well, we've talked about that a fair bit before,
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but now there's a chilling set of statistics that's been published by the Toronto Star to its credit,
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and that is that of all of these illegal border crossers, just 398 have been deported.
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Now, this by no means is telling us that all but 398 have been granted asylum.
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In fact, there have actually been a significant number of asylum claim rejections in this,
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We don't have the numbers up to today, but we're probably at about the 9,000 or 10,000 range,
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and that's only of the cases that have been heard and determined.
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But of the thousands of asylum claims that have been rejected,
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which means we have people who are not supposed to be in Canada
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that the government may or may not be tracking.
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And given how often we hear about how underfunded and understaffed the border agencies are,
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I would think it's probably a fair assumption to say that there is not tracking being done
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on the people who are determined to have not just entered Canada illegally,
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but are not eligible to remain here as asylum seekers, as any sort of claimant in that area.
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And this is, I think, underscoring what people like me have been sounding the alarm about for months
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and for over a year now, in fact, which is that we have had now a refugee influx or an asylum influx
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that has gotten to the point where we can't possibly manage it.
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And I don't see any signs of this slowing down,
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despite Canada having a new minister responsible for border security.
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Bill Blair, Canada's new minister of border security, doesn't seem to be anywhere on the issue.
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In fact, the agencies and boards responsible, the Immigration and Refugee Asylum Board,
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the Canadian Border Services Agency, none of these groups actually report to Bill Blair.
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So what are we doing to, first off, stop the influx,
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and secondly, deal with the ejection of people from Canada that don't belong in Canada?
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The government has been completely silent on that,
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which once again shows us how much of a sham the border crisis is to the Liberals.
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For the True North Initiative, I'm Andrew Lutton.
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For the True North Initiative, I'm Andrew Lutton.