Tightening of asylum rules at the Canadian border

Tightening of asylum rules at the Canadian border

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says asylum seekers at the Canadian border will have less time to consult with a lawyer before presenting their case as President Joe Biden's asylum freeze heads to Canada.

Biden announced sweeping changes in June aimed primarily at the U.S.-Mexico border as the issue remains a thorn in Democrats’ side ahead of the November election. The new procedural changes, which the department confirmed Tuesday, will affect migrants crossing the U.S. border from Canada.

The number of migrants crossing between Canada and the United States is far lower than at the U.S.-Mexico border, but recent increases have drawn the attention of Republicans.

The Department of Homeland Security said it had reviewed the Safe Third Country Agreement with Canada and concluded that it could streamline the process without affecting access to fair asylum determination procedures.

Under the agreement, which came into force in 2004, refugees must apply for asylum in the first of the two countries they land in.

The procedural change means that people entering the U.S. from Canada will now have four hours to consult with lawyers. That’s a significant drop from the previous 24-hour period, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “That makes it incredibly difficult given the way legal service providers work,” she said.

The change also means that border agents will only consider the evidence that asylum seekers have with them when they arrive. Bush-Joseph said people fleeing for their lives typically don’t have their belongings with them, “let alone piles of documentation of persecution.”

Ottawa did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

“It’s a huge red flag,” said Jamie Chai Yun Liew, a law professor at the University of Ottawa. “It really raises questions about whether the United States is living up to its international obligations.”

Jamie Chai Yun Liew was part of the legal team that intervened when the deal was being considered by the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled last year that the pact with the U.S. was constitutional.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Biden updated the Safe Third Country Agreement around the same time to close a loophole that allowed people who bypassed official border crossings to apply. That led to a dramatic drop in the number of people crossing from Canada to the U.S. at unofficial crossings, but the number of people traveling in the opposite direction began to rise.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows agents apprehended 12,612 people along the international border with Canada in the first six months of 2024. The sharp increase — from 12,218 in all of 2023 — has become a talking point for Republicans as immigration and border security remain a political liability for Democrats.

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month urging him to increase security measures along the U.S.-Canada border. “The possibility of terrorists crossing the U.S.-Canada border is deeply troubling given Hamas’s deep penetration of Gaza society,” Rubio said in the letter, after Canada pledged to increase temporary visas for Gazans seeking to join family members in our country.

Donald Trump, the former president and Republican nominee, criticized border security and migration under the Biden administration during a lengthy conversation with tech billionaire Elon Musk on Monday evening. Trump repeated claims that the border is a problem for Vice President Kamala Harris and said the Democratic presidential candidate is “not a smart woman.”

The new rules at the Canada-U.S. border mirror changes to time limits introduced at the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year.

Bush-Joseph said lawyers have already seen the effects of the policy. Four hours is often not enough time to hear an asylum seeker’s story, find out if they qualify for release and prepare them for an interview, she said. In some cases, there are additional hurdles, such as not speaking the same language or not having a lawyer review the documents.

Liew said she sympathized with governments trying to deal with the backlog and long processing times. But she said the new time frame did not strike the right balance to ensure people received a fair hearing. “It does not balance the interests of smooth movement of people at the border and ensuring that we meet the obligations that are owed to these people.”

Raport The Canadian Press z 13 sierpnia 2024 roku

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