Canada Halts Automatic Entry of Refuge Seekers

Canada issued strict new rules Friday that ended a program of automatic admission to foreigners claiming political refugee status.

Arguing that a sudden surge of refugees, mostly from Central and South America, threatens to overwhelm the nation’s social services, Immigration Minister Benoit Bouchard told a news conference in Ottawa that “we want a positive immigration program that permits the orderly entry of immigrants, but we cannot maintain such a program if we allow abuse of our refugee program to continue.”

In the past, the Canadian government has been known to lecture other countries for their restrictive immigration policies.

However, partly because of its own self-proclaimed image as a haven for the persecuted and as a reaction to U.S. restrictions on immigrants, Canada has witnessed a huge increase in recent months of people claiming refugee status on grounds that they would be endangered if forced to return home.

According to the Immigration Ministry, 6,120 people sought emergency refugee status in Canada between Jan. 1 and Feb. 15. Another 3,000 had sought entry in December.

These figures represent a quantum leap over past figures. Last year, 18,282 refugees sought emergency entry. If this year’s trend had continued, Canada would have received 48,560 self-proclaimed refugees, more than the total for the entire period from 1980 to 1986.

The new rules eliminate the automatic entry of people from 18 so-called B-1 countries--those nations where, in Canada’s judgment, civil strife or political or religious persecution could endanger the lives of refugees if they returned.

The list includes El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Sri Lanka, most Eastern European nations, other Communist-ruled countries and a scattering of other nations.

Salvadorans recently have topped the list of refugees entering Canada, with 2,294 seeking political asylum in the first six weeks of this year, mostly by crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. The high total has been attributed to Salvadoran refugees’ fears that they would be deported to El Salvador under new, tighter U.S. immigration laws.

Tamils, Iranians

Chileans were the next most numerous, with 1,010, followed by 600 Guatemalans. Other sizable refugees groups were Tamils from Sri Lanka and Iranians.

Other restrictions announced Friday require that all refugees crossing from the United States stay south of the border while their claims are processed by a hearing officer. Those coming from other nations must also seek refugee status in those countries pending a hearing.

Bouchard also said that people who are required to have a visa to visit Canada now must obtain a special transit visa if they are traveling through Canada en route to another country. This is aimed at ending the practice of some people, mostly from Eastern Europe and Iran, claiming refugee status during airline refueling stops in Canada.

All the new rules go into effect immediately. Bouchard also said that an agreement had been reached with American officials that will allow people seeking refugee status in Canada to stay in the United States without fear of immediate deportation, pending the Canadian determination process.

U.S. Policy Criticized

Canada has been critical of American policy that deems most Central American refugees not to be endangered in their home countries, thus leading to their deportation.

Despite the regulations, Bouchard told reporters that no genuine refugees will be turned back. However, he said, if alleged abuses are not ended, “it threatens to undermine our entire refugee-determination system and leave our borders increasingly vulnerable.”

Government officials said the minister’s views were based on estimates that 75% of the claims of refugee status made last year were bogus and that the same rate was holding so far this year.

However, opposition politicians, civil liberties groups and some religious leaders criticized the new regulations as cruel, inefficient and a betrayal of Canada’s traditional humanitarian policies.

“It’s a message to the international community that Canada is no longer the country that extends its hand to the persecuted,” said Michael Schelew, a spokesman for Amnesty International. It’s a sign that we too are becoming unkind, indifferent and uncaring.”

‘Unsafe Places’

Tom Clark, coordinator of the Inter-Church Committee on Refugees, said that “putting homeless people at risk in unsafe places, possibly putting them to death, is unconscionable.”

But Bouchard said in a statement that “population increases, global strife and reduced immigration opportunities turn more and more people toward Canada.” If that trend continues unchecked, he added, Canada will soon be unable to provide for them.

Ontario and Quebec, the two provinces where most of the refugees have settled, have complained for months that their social service agencies were being overrun, to the detriment of the immigrants and the needy in general.

Despite Bouchard’s claim that Canada is not turning its back on its traditional view of welcoming genuine political and religious refugees, the new regulations are a return to what has been the country’s historically restrictive immigration policies.

Liberal Governments

Until the 1960s, Canada kept its borders closed to immigrants other than those from Western Europe and the United States. Eastern Europeans, Asians, blacks and Jews were generally kept out until the Liberal Party governments of Prime Ministers Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau began accepting them in larger, but still limited, numbers.

Even in current times, Canada has limited immigrants to between 95,000 and 115,000 a year, and those allowed in were generally required to have close relatives already here or to provide exceptional economic benefits to the country.

Although government officials deny any racism in the new regulations, public pressure for tighter regulations began to build in 1986, when Central Americans and South Asians began seeking refugee status in ever-increasing numbers.