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In these circumstances, the RCMP is doing its best to give the impression that laws are being enforced. Its officers arrest the migrants for crossing illegally, but quickly release them so that they can proceed with their refugee claims. Potential claimants coming from the U.S. are fully aware of this game. Many Canadians have seen images of the absurd way illegal migrants are being handled on the old Roxham Road several kilometres from the official Lacolle crossing. If this is allowed to continue, it will almost certainly undermine public confidence in our immigration system.

The RCMP is doing its best to give the impression that laws are being enforced

If Ottawa believes the U.S. is safe, then the mode by which migrants enter Canada should be irrelevant to whether they’re permitted to claim refugee status. Canada is a sovereign country; migrants do not generally have an unqualified right to enter its territory, regardless of any agreements on border cooperation. Some commentators have suggested the U.S. can somehow force the loophole to stay in effect. This is inaccurate. As long as Canada considers the U.S. to be safe for refugee claimants, it can refuse migrants entry even if the entire agreement were suspended (our Supreme Court has said refugee claimants in Canada are entitled to a hearing only if they risk being returned to a dangerous country).

The European Union has a similar agreement between its members (known as the Dublin Regulation), which also tries to avoid the “asylum shopping” problem. It does not contain a loophole based on a migrant’s mode of entry, so EU members are supposed to send refugee claimants back to the first EU country that they entered. For example, authorities in Belgium were supposed to send migrants back to Greece if that was the first EU country the migrants had entered. The system is presently being revised, but the ongoing European migrant crisis arguably worsened when Greece was declared by the European Court of Human Rights to be unsafe for refugee claimants back in 2011. If Canada were to determine that the U.S. is unsafe, this would greatly complicate matters. The Trudeau government would likely then have to deal with many more migrants who are supposed to be deported from the U.S. for valid reasons and who have showed up at any border crossing.