A family, claiming to be from Colombia, is arrested by RCMP officers as they cross the border into Canada from the United States as asylum-seekers in April 2018 near Champlain, N.Y. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

OTTAWA — The federal government has been closely monitoring public reaction to the influx of asylum seekers in Canada by regularly conducting national surveys and measuring discussions on social media.

Documents released to the Canadian Press under access-to-information law show department officials receive weekly internal updates on media coverage and public response to issues related to asylum-seekers coming irregularly into the country across the Canada-U.S. border.

This monitoring includes internal polling conducted by the Immigration department to track public opinion about asylum-seekers.

Two mid-year surveys of 2,000 Canadians, conducted by the department in March, suggested Canadians were not overly confident in Canada’s ability to manage the border at unguarded points-of-entry, and did not feel especially obliged to accept asylum-seekers from the United States.

Fewer than half of respondents — 43 per cent in a telephone survey and 35 per cent in an online survey — agreed that Canada is taking appropriate steps to manage irregular border crossings.

Forty-two per cent of telephone respondents and just 18 per cent of online respondents indicated they felt the number of people coming to Canada and claiming asylum was at an appropriate level.

“Canadians are more receptive to refugees who have been selected by the government of Canada, compared to those who come to Canada and claim asylum,” the internal document notes.

The documents also show the Immigration department closely measures what people say about asylum-seekers on social media. This includes a weekly average of how many times a day the matter is mentioned.

The government also measures the number of times that media stories on asylum-seekers include “myths countering messaging.”

It also uses social media as a tool to disseminate information as part of its outreach efforts to discourage irregular migrants from coming to Canada.

A targeted advertising campaign using search-engine marketing to reach key populations in the U.S. was launched on Dec. 18, 2017, and continued until March 17, 2018. It included “targeted messaging based on users’ search terms to users in select U.S. cities where larger temporary protected status populations are found,” the internal document states.

An influx of “irregular” border crossers into Canada began in early 2017, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would end a program that offered temporary protected status to immigrants from several countries in the United States.

More than 36,000 asylum-seekers have since arrived in Canada from the U.S., avoiding official border checkpoints where they would have been turned back to the U.S. under the Safe Third Country Agreement between the two countries. Instead, they have been crossing the border along forest paths and fields, declaring their intent to seek refugee status once on Canadian soil.

The issue has sparked calls for Canada to suspend or amend the Safe Third Country Agreement as a way to stop the flow of irregular migrants.

Border Security Minister Bill Blair says there was not a major surge in irregular border crossers apprehended by RCMP this summer compared to last summer.

“Our senior officials are working hard … and they are managing the situation quite ably,” Blair said Thursday.

However, year-over-year numbers show that overall, more people have crossed irregularly into Canada so far this year, compared to crossings from January to September 2017.

—Follow @ReporterTeresa on Twitter.