OTTAWA—It’s one of the most sensitive debates in Canadian politics.

Thousands of people are crossing into Canada from the United States to claim refugee status at a time when the U.S. president’s anti-immigrant bombast clashes with the #WelcomeToCanada posture of a Liberal prime minister.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen has lashed out at conservative critics, labelling their political message that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau naively invited refugees to clog the immigration system as “fear-mongering” and “not Canadian.” New Democrats, meanwhile, charge the federal government is blind to the need to rescind a 13-year-old agreement that declares the U.S. a “safe country” and forces migrants from south of the border to avoid official ports of entry if they want to claim refugee status in Canada.

And just last week, with Progressive Conservatives at Queen’s Park joining the attack on Trudeau, the prime minister appointed former Toronto police chief Bill Blair to a brand new cabinet portfolio focused on “border security and organized crime reduction.”

Let’s turn down the noise and see what’s going on here.

OK, what’s going on?

Over the past two years, media attention has focused on the tens of thousands of people who have entered Canada “irregularly” — that is, who have walked across the border at some place other than an official crossing station and been apprehended by police.

Critics say the influx is the result of the Safe Third Country Agreement, a 2005 pact with the U.S. that says refugees must claim asylum from the country they arrive in first — but only if they come through official ports of entry. “Irregular” migrants are allowed to seek refugee status when they enter Canada from the U.S. because they’ve crossed the border somewhere else.

The NDP argues that Donald Trump’s America is not in fact safe for asylum seekers, and wants Ottawa to suspend the agreement so they aren’t encouraged to walk across the border at isolated points, where some have endured severe frostbite in winter months.

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The Conservatives, on the other hand, are pushing Ottawa to change the agreement so it applies to the entire border. That would mean irregular migrants from the U.S. would not be able to apply for asylum in Canada, where the Tories argue resources to support them are strained. Last summer, when a surge of migrants crossed into Quebec from Vermont, Montreal used its Olympic Stadium as a temporary shelter in the face of strained local resources, and the federal government set up tents to house refugee claimants at the border.

Indeed, much of the discussion around the issue pertains to strain on shelter systems in places like Montreal and Toronto, as well as on the immigration system. As the Star’s Nicholas Keung reported last week, employees at the Immigration and Refugee Board — the independent tribunal responsible for judging refugee claims — can’t keep pace. According to a CBC report, it now takes at least 20 months for a refugee claim to be processed, up from 16 months last October.

Meanwhile, those asylum claimants need shelter and support. The city of Toronto estimated it will spend $64 million on temporary housing for refugees this year alone. Ottawa has pledged $11 million to help the situation.

Quebec, where the vast majority of asylum claimants first arrive, is facing similar pressures and has demanded more help from the federal government, while Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s new administration has made this a political focus and demanded that Trudeau’s Liberals clean up the “mess.”

Are these migrants breaking the law?

That question has been one of the most contentious in this entire discussion. The Conservatives have dubbed recent refugee claimants “illegal border crossers,” while the government chooses to call them “irregular” migrants.

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, says the confusion arises because it is against the law to cross irregularly into Canada. But she points out that Canadian law also recognizes the right to claim refugee status. According to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, new arrivals can’t be prosecuted for illegally entering Canada once they apply for refugee status.

“It makes it illegal but also says it’s not illegal at the same time,” she said, because legitimate refugee claimants aren’t treated as lawbreakers.

Dench says this is consistent with the 1951 United Nations refugees convention, which was drafted in the shadow of the Holocaust, when countries like Canada turned back Jews who had sought safe haven from Nazi Germany.

Dench prefers the term “irregular” migrants or refugee claimants.

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Is this a crisis?

Most refugee advocates say it’s not. Others — such as the federal Conservatives — say it is.

Dench says it’s important to look at the numbers. So far in 2018, 10,744 people have been intercepted by the RCMP while crossing the border outside an official port of entry. That’s roughly on pace for the number of “irregular migrants” Canada saw in 2017, which came in at 20,593.

Those numbers are certainly higher than recent years. But zoom out and you’ll see Canada has seen much higher spikes of refugee claimants in previous years: 36,856 in 2008, 33,426 in 2002 and 44,640 in 2001.

Moreover, RCMP interceptions dropped from 2,560 in April to 1,263 last month, when some advocacy groups expected an increase similar to last summer. Compared to the hundreds of thousands of refugee claimants in Europe and places like Bangladesh — where some 700,000 Rohingya refugees have fled from neighbouring Myanmar — Canada’s number of claimants is still relatively small.

“It’s certainly not something that we can’t handle or incorporate,” said Aris Daghighian, a Toronto lawyer who sits on the executive of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

Dench agrees, saying that while there has been an increase in the past two years, “it truly is an extremely tiny number of people who are arriving in the scheme of things.”

Then why all the fuss?

The number of people fleeing war and persecution has risen in recent years to the highest level since the Second World War, according to the UN’s refugee agency. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees have poured into Europe, prompting political crises in countries like Germany, which welcomed huge numbers. Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing Burma have crowded into camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

In North America, this global phenomenon has been coloured by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose sharp anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies contrast with the Trudeau Liberals, who were elected promising to open Canada to more refugees.

Daghighian says this context is important to understanding why there is so much political and media focus on Canada’s increased number of refugee claimants.

“Most people can understand why there would be apprehensive individuals in the U.S.,” he said. “Because the increase (here) has coincided with what’s happening under the Trump administration, it may seem more dire than it is.”

At the same time, looking at that two-year spike in isolation misses the broader picture, says Dench. The number of claimants entering Canada dropped significantly in 2013 and 2014, and has gradually risen since then as the number of refugees worldwide has increased.

“It’s actually just returning to more normal numbers for Canada,” she said.

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