The Canadian government is reducing the number of temporary immigrants. But not that of asylum seekers. For the first nine months of 2024, there were nearly 133,000 requests, or 39% more than for the same period in 2023.
Published at 5:00 a.m.
The majority of asylum seekers do not appear at entry points: they make their request later, when they are on the territory.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
In Quebec, 3,000 foreign students applied for asylum during the first months of 2024.
This is the case for foreign students who request asylum: 14,000 for the first months of the year, including 3,000 in Quebec. But above all, these are foreigners who entered Canada on a visitor visa and who then apply for asylum.
These are not small numbers. Requests made within the territory represented less than a third of the total in 2022. The proportion increased to 50% in 2023. It reaches 63% in 2024, or almost two thirds: 84,655 out of 132,525.
In 2024, for example, three quarters of the 14,430 asylum requests from Bangladeshis were made locally, and therefore by people holding visas. This is also the case for India, whose requests have exploded in Canada. For the first nine months of 2024, 11,550 of the 24,380 applications were filed within the country.
PHOTO SEAN KILPATRICK, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Marc Miller, Federal Minister of Immigration
In June, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller acknowledged the existence of anomalies. “There is work, there is some additional tightening of the noose to be done,” he declared to The Canadian Press, referring to the surge in cases where visas have been used, “notably of the ‘India or Bangladesh’.
More profitable than cocaine
These surges in arrivals from certain countries may indicate the existence of networks or systems to encourage and facilitate the entry of asylum seekers into Canada.
Often, these are social networks, where information circulates around the globe at great speed. By typing the keywords “asylum” and “Canada” on TikTok, we come across hundreds of videos: official messages, testimonials, specialists, but also “consultants” of all kinds.
Sometimes it is fake consultants who encourage people to apply for asylum. Recently, Minister Marc Miller revealed that 3,000 websites operated by unauthorized practitioners had been closed by the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants.
But, above all, there is a real industry.
Currently, migration is more profitable than cocaine for Central American drug traffickers.
François Audet, director of the Canadian Observatory on Humanitarian Crises and Action at UQAM
“As soon as there are migratory corridors, what we observe is that there is an economy that is established. Not everyone is ill-intentioned in this, adds François Audet, but it is certain that there is a lot of abuse of all kinds. There are plenty of cases where there are organizations, companies, experts or lawyers who claim to be immigration experts who will create marketing systems to bring in people from outside, who are not responsible for the all to the asylum criteria. »
In a report, Sikhs told The Press having paid large sums, in excess of $30,000, to obtain a visitor visa, which Canada issues for $100.
Many Indians seek asylum for economic reasons.
Catherine Viens, associate professor at the Canadian Observatory on Humanitarian Crises and Action, at UQAM
“We are in a segment of the population that is a little more affluent. People from Punjab, for example, will own land, and that’s what they will sell to obtain a visa. There is this idea that in Canada, there are open policies and a lot of economic opportunities, underlines Professor Catherine Viens. So, these people who don’t see a future in India will say: we’d rather try our hand at it. »
