Bindu Suri:

The debate over immigration policies in the US has some north of the border questioning if Canada is doing enough to address our own immigration concerns. Raj Sharma, an immigration lawyer here in Calgary, has been following this issue very closely, he joins us this morning. Thanks for coming in.

Raj Sharma:

My pleasure.

Bindu Suri:

This is an issue we’ve been talking about for weeks of course and although it’s happening in the United States Canadian’s are very familiar with it because of just listening to the stories, it really impacts you and there’s a lot of debate on both sides. What you say is that what Canadians may not realize is that it may impact us more than we think because of a ripple effect. Can you explain that to us?

Raj Sharma:

For sure. What we’re seeing right now and this is a phenomenon that started about 2014 so we’re seeing the complete breakdown of states in Central America. We have Honduras and El Salvador with unbelievably dire situations, we have a homicide rate in these countries that’s higher than countries that are experiencing civil war for example. The complete breakdown of the state or the states in the western hemisphere you’re now seeing the surge in migrant crossing from those countries of course, you know they’re connected by land so you’re seeing this uptick into the US.

Individuals, when we think about it we think that it’s the Mexican’s that are crossing the borders but in fact border crossing’s from Mexican nationals are almost at an all time low. You have a 25% of those crossings are now done by Central Americans so you have this going to the US, combined that with the Trump rhetoric, combined that with child detention and family separation, combined that with the cancellation of temporary protected status for El Salvador nationals, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and what you are going to see of course is hundreds of thousands of individuals in the US with precarious status and really not gonna be looking to Trump for any kind of relief, I think you’re going to see movement continue up north into Canada and our system is simply not designed for this level of numbers.

Bindu Suri:

It’s not designed for this level of numbers and yet we hear our prime minister saying that Canada is welcoming, we don’t do things here the way they do things in the United States, but you’re saying that could change as a situation escalates?

Raj Sharma:

Well those are great sound bites when Justin Trudeau says, “This is not how we do things in Canada,” but the last Indian residential school closed down in 1996. We do have children in detention, there’s 151 kids in detention in Canada right now. We do in fact cause family separation. Now to be clear Canada’s policies don’t call for detention of children en masse, we don’t have family separation en masse, but we do have these sort of outlier type of situations and I don’t like this attitude of looking down the noses at the United States because I can guarantee you you show me one egregious or crossing of the line by American immigration policy and I’ll find analogous one in Canadian immigration law and policy.

Bindu Suri:

Okay. As you mentioned as well that if we do see more immigration into Canada our system isn’t equipped to handle that and why not? I mean when you deal with cases are there cases where you think you know our policy should be amended in this way or that way? Why aren’t we equipped to handle those numbers?

Raj Sharma:

Our system was designed with the reality that the United States has this massive gravitational pull for immigration, both legal and irregular and asylum. We were able to sort of pick off, we were like this sort of remora, and there’s the United States, this great white shark, and we’re this remora that was able to pick [up] qualified immigrants.

For example we have a merit based system, we had a merit based system since 1971 and prior to that and Trump has commented on it, other countries want to follow suit like the UK, but our system in terms of refugee determination we can handle perhaps 20,000 claims per year and you have 45,000 border crosser last year and we’re projected perhaps 90,000 plus this year. It is like a snowball rolling down the hill so the more people that cross the longer it’s gonna take for refugee determination, fewer people get deported, that will embolden more people to cross the border, and so you are now projected if numbers continue perhaps a 10 year wait for a refugee claim if someone enters Canada today.

Bindu Suri:

Wow so this continues to change of course a developing story so we will keep in touch with you about this and thank you so much for getting us up to speed on everything happening here in Canada. Raj Sharma, an immigration lawyer here in Calgary.