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Asylum seekers do not get a “free ticket” to Canada, said public safety minister Ralph Goodale on Monday in Montreal. He joined Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen and Transportation Minister Marc Garneau in a news conference designed to assure Canadians that the Trudeau government has a handle on the illegal immigration crisis.

Perhaps unwittingly, their numbers told a very different story.

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Canada received over 50,000 asylum applications in 2017, the highest in decades and a 200% increase over the previous year. Nearly half of these claimants — about 20,600 — crossed illegally into Canada to make their claim. Or, as the Liberals like to say, they crossed “irregularly.”

So far in 2018, things have gotten significantly worse.

During the first three months of the year, 5,053 migrants have illegally crossed the border; compare this to the 1,890 during the first three months of 2017. April saw another 2,500 border-hoppers, according to Garneau, compared to 894 last April.