With renewed pressure brought to bear by President Donald Trump on illegal aliens in the U.S., Canada is warning immigrants here that illegally crossing into Canada is not a free ticket to permanent residency and they can still be deported back to their point of origin if they steal across America’s northern border.
With many illegal immigrants becoming uneasy over their status in the U.S., some are eyeing a trip northward to a country many are told will accept everyone and give them lots of free stuff to boot.
But Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s immigration minister, recently warned illegals that they shouldn’t waltz into Canada and necessarily expect to get cradle to the grave freebies, according to the New York Times.
Hussen, who was an immigrant to Canada himself, warned illegals that while Canada is a welcoming country, they won’t take everyone who illegally crosses into the country.
“We don’t want people to illegally enter our border, and doing so is not a free ticket to Canada,” Hussen said . “We are saying, ‘You will be apprehended, screened, detained, fingerprinted, and if you can’t establish a genuine claim, you will be denied refugee protection and removed.'”
In a statement made in March, Hussen again warned illegals not to try entering Canada. “Anyone who is in the United States who is intending to come to Canada to make an asylum claim should do so in the United States and not embark on what could potentially be a dangerous journey across our border,” he said
In another effort to stave off a wave of illegals, Canada is sending Pablo Rodriguez to Los Angeles, California. Rodriguez, who is from Canada’s Liberal Party and a member of Parliament, intends to warn Mexicans and Central and South Americans that they can’t assume they’ll get a free ride by illegally entering into Canada.
Rodriquez isn’t the first. Officials already sent yet another liberal politician to America to warn illegals against heading north. The Canadian federal government also sent Emmanuel Dubourg, an official from Montreal, to Miami, Florida, to warn Haitian refugees against the idea of picking up and running off to Canada.
“People come here and realize that this is not the Promised Land and that they could be deported back to Haiti,” Dubourg reportedly told the refugees during his visit last summer.
Even leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to temper his open door policy by noting that Canada is a “nation of laws” and illegals can’t just stream across the border at will. “Canada is an opening and welcoming society, but let me be clear. We are also a country of laws,” he said in August.
Canada is desperate to tell refugees that the rumor that one could “walk in and stay forever” in Canada is simply not true.
The country’s immigration system is already overwhelmed. There are too few immigration judges to review cases, and a backlog of almost 50,000 cases have accrued. And that number is growing, officials say. In addition, many illegals are escaping the criminal background checks that Canada is supposed to run for every immigrant because the government does not have the resources to fulfill the requirement, Forbes reported.
Some also wonder how long it will take until voters turn against the overly lax immigration attitude of the liberals currently controlling the country’s government.
“There is a disconnect between Trudeau’s hashtag ‘Welcome to Canada’ and the reality that the system is overwhelmed,” Michelle Rempel, a conservative member of the government, told the Times. “It can lead to a nationalist blowback like we have seen in Europe.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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