Posted on 06/20/2002 12:36:23 PM PDT by not-alone
Alarmed refugees try to enter before agreement is signed; shelter lined up in Clinton County
PLATTSBURGH — The Salvation Army may soon become a temporary shelter for refugees rushing to seek asylum in Canada. Capt. Dennis Cregan of the Salvation Army said the South Catherine Street branch is prepared to house 25 refugees in about a month.
Ronald Blanchet, director of the Canadian Immigration Center in LaColle, Quebec, said that since May there has been a significant increase in refugees wanting to enter Canada.
In June 2001, Canadian Immigration saw 366 refugees. The number has doubled so far this June.
"I believe this is a result of a rumor in the U.S. that the border will be closed to refugees in the end of June," Blanchet said. "Of course, it is not true." A Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act will go into effect June 28, but Blanchet said it will not cut off refugee immigration.
"Any change (in policy) always brings an increase," he said.
On Tuesday, immigration officials processed about 45 cases, while 90 to 100 people spent the night in the waiting room.
Patrick Giantonio, executive director for Vermont Refugee Assistance, a volunteer non-profit organization that assists those seeking asylum, said hundreds of refugees want to cross into Canada before a pact known as the Safe Third-Country Agreement goes into effect. If the U.S./Canadian agreement is signed, Giantonio said, it will mandate that individuals arriving in the United States make asylum claims here, in certain situations. "This means refugees will only get one shot of applying for asylum in U.S. and Canada," he said. "We feel after someone has been ripped from their home, they should be allowed in their country of choice." The United States and Canada entered into negotiations for a Safe Third-Country Agreement following a conference in early December. The purpose of the agreement is to reduce abuse of refugee programs.
"We feel the lack of information is causing more alarm in the refugee community," Giantonio said.
He wants to use the Salvation Army as a staging area for refugees waiting to cross the border. He said the organization is not looking for shelters in Vermont because New York state is equipped to handle many more refugee cases than Vermont crossings.
"The Salvation Army has been very generous to offer help," Giantonio said.
Blanchet believes a shelter is a good idea. "People could benefit by sleeping in a more human environment," he said.
On Friday, a Canadian border official will meet with Cregan and representatives from the Clinton County Department of Social Services to explain the situation. Jay LePage, commissioner of Social Services, said: "This week is about educating ourselves. We’re not jumping into a situation until we gather information." LePage said Social Services was approached by Vermont Refugee Assistance to set up a possible shelter, but LePage wants to more know details about the border situation.
"Right now, we are not looking to set up shelter in Clinton County," he said.
Cregan said the Salvation Army will house refugees for about two days as they wait to cross the border. The last refugee situation where the Salvation Army offered housing was in 1989.
"The Salvation Army is prepared to do whatever we can do," Cregan said.
Canada interprets its provisions mor liberally than does the US.
At the present time, about 70 percent of refugee claimants entering Canada are entering from the US.
There is also a flow of claimants the other way.
The agreement that is about to come into effect is to the effect that each country treats the other as a safe haven and therefore anyone who crosses the border between the two countries is, by definition, coming from a safe haven and is therefore not a refugee.
I am oversimplifying, there will still be claimants asserting to Canada that they are in danger in the US and claimants asserting to the US that they are in danger in Canada.
There has been no political will in the past to seriously deal with a glut of spurious claimants coming into Canada (I submit that the US has a similar lack of political will), including claimants coming from the US where they are perfectly safe.
An additional problem is that the Supreme Court of Canada has held that refugee claimants have full procedural rights once they set foot on Canadian soil. As the judicial determination process is lengthy, claimants may remain for years, get deported, then come back asserting a fresh cause of claim.
underlying all this is that the Liberal government correctly percieves immigrants, including false refugee claimants, as potential future Liberal votes, even as they are potential Democrat votes in the US.
This agreement would not have been entered into but for September 11. The public attitude toward spurious refugee claimants has pushed both countries into acting.
An example of how silly it can get. We have had instances of foreign university students in US border state schools, in the US on student visas, some of whom are subsidized, coming to Canada and asserting a refugee claim, thereby obtaining monthly public welfare cheques and free health services while their claims are being processed. The students then set up an Canadian address and an account in a Canadian bank into which their goivernment welfare chques are direct-deposited by the government. Then they go back to their college student residences and use their ATM cards to draw the monthly allowance, coming back to Canada for health care if they get sick.
Canada has been criticized for having a lax immigration system, but part of it is due to the ongoing dispute between Quebec and the rest of the country. As a concession to Quebec after that province's last secession referendum barely failed to pass, the Canadian government allowed Quebec to have their own immigration laws. Because Quebec has such a low birthrate (if it were an independent country it would be the lowest in the world), they rely heavily on immigration to maintain a stable population. Their laws allow anyone from a French-speaking country to enter Quebec with almost no questions asked. As a result, the province has become a haven of sorts for terrorists from French-speaking countries such as Algeria, Lebanon, etc. (this explains why one of those Y2K bombers – the Algerian – was caught at a border crossing in Vermont, maybe even the crossing mentioned here in this article).
Over the last decade or so, many people trying to emigrate to the U.S. found that it was easier to get into Canada and come across the border than it was to come directly to the U.S. Once the Canadian government got wind of this, they started picking up illegal aliens who were trying to get to the U.S. and dumping them at the border. Basically, they said to the U.S.: "You take them -- that's where they want to go anyway."
To deal with this flood of immigrants, U.S. set up a detainment center near Plattsburgh, NY where these wayward immigrants were kept while their paperwork was being processed. What may be happening here is that the current detainees at this center or illegal immigrants living in the area are starting to fear that their applications for visas, refugee status, etc. in the U.S. are going to be rejected and they're going to be sent back to wherever they came from.
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