The Ripple Effects of US Immigration Policy on Refugee Children: A Canadian Perspective

With over 1 in 5 Canadians identifying as an immigrant, Canada has been proud to call itself a nation of immigrants with a commitment to supporting refugees, from accepting thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s to Syrians fleeing civil war in 2015. In 2017, 44,000 refugees came as government-sponsored or privately sponsored refugees, having been offered permanent residency in Canada prior to arrival. Fewer arrive as asylum seekers -- 24,000 in 2016, 40% of whom arrived via the Canada-US border. Given Canada's geographic location, individuals may arrive by air, sea, or land across the longest shared land border in the world with the United States. In 2011, Canadian officials reported 4,205 claims made at this border. This number nearly quintupled in 2018, with 19,085 claims, totaling nearly 40,000 asylum claims since 2016 and coinciding with the changes in US governmental administration and their immigration and temporary resident policies. Families reported that for them, the US was no longer safe and they sought asylum in Canada. Due to the Safe Third Country Agreement, which does not permit asylum claims from the United States at official border crossings, many asylum seekers have crossed through unofficial border crossings, most of them in the provinces of Quebec and Manitoba. This article touches upon a number of issues that have come to light with the rising numbers of children who are asylum seekers trickling across the US-Canada border.