They increased and hit the headlines at the beginning of April, then slowed down in the past few weeks. Asylum requests at the Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle border post presented by people from the United States have been in their highest since the Roxham Chemin, but have decreased for two weeks.
In April 2025, there will be a total of 2,733 asylum requests at this land entry point, which is considerably more than in the previous April (670), according to the figures provided to Duty by the Border Services Agency of Canada (ASFC). March also had 1356 land arrivals in Quebec.
The figures of March and April 2025 are thus higher than those observed each month since the expansion of the agreement on third party safe countries in March 2023, which had put an end to arrivals by Roxham path, in Montérégie.
When the number is detailed per week, however, a certain slowdown is looming. During the biggest arrival week, that from April 7 to 13, 854 people showed up in Quebec from the United States. The last week available, that from April 28 to May 4, saw 208 people arriving to ask for asylum in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, four times less.
Downward trend
It is also the total number of asylum seekers who arrived in Quebec since the start of the year that must be tempered, according to the most recent data. ASFC also receives asylum requests at airports and its offices within the territory. This total is 42 % lower than last year at such a date.
To finish drawing the portrait of the whole province for April, it is therefore lacking only the immigration, refugees and citizenship Canada (IRCC) figures – which will be made public “in the coming weeks”, is limited to answering us the federal ministry.
Until March, it was rather “a significant decrease” which was looming overall for Quebec compared to 2023 and 2024, while Ontario continues to receive more.
It is therefore difficult to predict the longer term trend, while many new asylum seekers are affected by Donald Trump’s government policies. The American president has indeed multiplied the decrees depriving hundreds of thousands of people from their legal status: among them, more than 500,000 Haitian nationals, who have formed most of the recent arrivals in Quebec.
Several of these decrees are disputed in court, which means that the end date of the statutes continues to be rejected. It is nonetheless surrounded by great uncertainty.
Only people who qualify at one of the exceptions to the third party country agreement can request asylum at an official entry point. The most common is the existence of a family bond with a citizen or a permanent resident of Canada. New asylum seekers therefore seem to join family members, since Quebec government accommodation sites are far from full.
To cope with the increase in land arrivals in Quebec, “additional resources have been set up to ensure the safe and safe management of the border,” says a spokesperson for the ASFC.
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