Gideon Maltz is CEO of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a coalition of over 300 companies committed to hiring, training and mentoring refugees. He previously served in the U.S. government under both Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
As the television news broadcasts images of bedraggled asylum seekers having just stepped foot in the country, political leaders express outrage at the cost of providing them with housing and other services, and two-thirds of the public calls the situation a “crisis,” claiming that it’s “too many people” for the country to absorb.
Sound familiar?
If so, it may be surprising to know that this describes Canada — quite possibly the most pro-immigration country in the world — and its handling of “Roxham Road,” a border crossing in Quebec that saw 40,000 asylum seekers enter from the United States last year.
So, with its new Illegal Migration Bill, which aims to curb cross-Channel migration, Britain’s government isn’t unique in seeking ways to reduce irregular migration. However, the point is that it does stand alone in seeking to do so in a cruel and feckless way.
Just recently, under mounting domestic pressure, Canada’s center-left government persuaded the U.S. to allow it to turn back anyone crossing the border via Roxham Road, effectively closing Canada’s southern border to asylum seekers.
Meanwhile, further south, the U.S. government — while under a Democratic administration — has attracted bitter criticism from human rights activists for its bid to reduce the number of asylum seekers crossing from Mexico. A proposed rule would presumptively deny asylum to anyone who doesn’t use a specific cellphone app to register for an appointment — a controversial policy rendered even more questionable by reports that the app is “riddled with glitches.”
This means we’re facing a political reality where even center-left governments in the U.S., Canada and across Europe are confronting the fact that the average voter is highly supportive of refugees arriving through orderly, regulated means, while also very anxious about the same individuals arriving through seemingly chaotic, unregulated channels. For example, last summer, 53 percent of Americans called the situation at the U.S. border an “invasion,” even as 73 percent expressed support for the country taking in refugees — mirroring data from the United Kingdom.
And it appears this anxiety is further exacerbated when asylum seekers arrive from seemingly safe countries. Just as some in the U.K. question why asylum seekers cannot safely remain in France, Canadians question why they cannot remain in the U.S. and Americans question why they cannot remain in Mexico — the immediate danger they face now seemingly in the past.
To be clear, I don’t agree with these views. To close borders to asylum seekers, trapping them in the first safe country they enter, would unravel the entire global system of refugee protection — uneven though it is — and ultimately result in countries closest to a crisis feeling emboldened to shut refugees out entirely.
However, it’s crucial to note that while Canada may have shut Roxham Road, it still welcomed 75,000 refugees last year through an organized resettlement process. And in announcing its agreement with the U.S. government, it also committed to admitting 15,000 more refugees from South and Central America — preempting the need for the dangerous journey overland.
Similarly, the U.S. has confronted irregular migration on its southern border not primarily by deterrence but by launching a program creating a legal pathway for 360,000 Haitians, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Venezuelans per year – origin countries for significant numbers of asylum seekers — and as a result, irregular migration from these countries dropped by over 90 percent. This comes on top of legal channels for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan, as well as a commitment — which should be on track by the end of the year — to admit 125,000 refugees per year from other parts of the world.
The U.K.’s recent record, meanwhile, is decidedly mixed.
To its credit, the U.K. has provided safe and legal routes to 200,000 Ukrainian refugees, and they’re contributing to the British economy — data from last summer showed that almost half of displaced Ukrainians in the U.K. had already found a job. Likewise, Britain welcomed tens of thousands of Hong Kongers too. Its initiative to help Afghan refugees, however, has been shambolic — by one count, only 22 have arrived. And with only 1,185 refugees resettled in the country last year, the U.K. is offering effectively no legal route to Afghan, Eritrean, Syrian, Iranian and Sudanese refugees — the majority of those who made boat crossings last year and who do, in fact, overwhelmingly qualify for asylum.
When pressed on the question of safe and legal routes for refugees, however, Home Secretary Suella Braverman has simply waved it off.
Human rights activists and refugee advocates are right to oppose government restrictions on asylum seekers in any form, anywhere. At the same time, the Canadian and U.S. governments are coupling their border restrictions with extraordinary measures to welcome refugees through legal and safe routes — which at least have some promise of helping steer those seeking asylum away from irregular crossings.
By contrast, the U.K. government proposes extravagant border restrictions divorced from any effort to provide alternative legal channels — further immiserating asylum seekers, without actually reducing irregular crossings. And practically speaking, this policy won’t deter a boat-crossing by an Afghan who served as an interpreter for U.K. troops and then had to flee from the Taliban — it will simply add insult to injury.
Overall, this isn’t a policy that’s designed to be effective — it’s one that’s designed to be cruel.
