Refugees self deporting to Canada

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Manitoba's Welcome Place refugee agency helped 91 claimants between Nov. 1 and Jan. 25 - more than the agency normally sees in a year. Most braved the freezing prairie winter to walk into Canada.

"We haven't had something before like this," said Maggie Yeboah, president of the Ghanaian Union of Manitoba, which has helped refugees get medical attention and housing. "We don't know what to do."

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More than 7,000 refugee applicants entered Canada in 2016 through land ports of entry from the United States, up 63 percent from the previous year, according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Over 2,000 more entered "irregularly" during a similar time period, without official authorization, such as across unmonitored fields.

Four hundred and thirty asylum seekers crossed Manitoba's border irregularly in the first nine months of 2016-17, up from 340 the entire previous year, CBSA said.

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More of these people would enter at border crossings, advocates say, if Canada didn't have a policy of turning many of them away when they do. The 2004 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement requires people to apply for asylum in the first of the two countries they arrive in. Advocates argue the agreement inadvertently encourages people to dangerously sneak into Canada and make a claim rather than be rebuffed at the border.

If the government doesn't abandon this agreement, they say, it could find itself in court.

The number of refugee applicants crossing the land border under exceptions to the Safe Third Country Agreement has risen by 16 percent in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same time period the year before.

In Buffalo, New York, hundreds of people are streaming through Vive, a shelter that helps refugee applicants to Canada.

Vive’s client numbers, including long-time U.S. residents and refugees, spiked last summer and have stayed consistently high since – two or three times what they’d normally see a year or two ago. Vive's Canadian service manager Mariah Walker expects to see even more.

"Clients are definitely spooked by (Trump's) executive orders," said Walker.

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