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Canada is trying to curb the number of asylum seekers from Nigeria who are
flooding into Canada via the United States, officials said Monday. About
2,500 migrants, mostly Nigerian nationals, entered Canada illegally in
April, bringing the total so far this year to more than 7,300.
They crossed on foot along a forest trail from New York state to Quebec
province, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told a news conference.
He will travel to Nigeria in the coming days to press the issue. At
Ottawa’s request, US authorities have also recently tightened their visa
rules for Nigerians to try to prevent tourists from flying to the US and
then hopping across the border to file Canadian refugee claims.
An average of 70-80 migrants per day have been making the trip of late,
said Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale. Nearly 21,000 border jumpers
were intercepted by federal police in 2017 and allowed to file a refugee
claim.
“Just over 90 percent of irregular migrants do not meet our criteria (for
asylum) and they will have to leave Canada,” Garneau said, adding that 200
currently face imminent deportation after their refugee claims were
rejected.
The first arrivals in 2016 were mostly Haitians who faced repatriation at
the end of US temporary special protections granted after storms battered
their desperately poor island nation.
But the wave expanded last year to also include Djiboutian, Eritrean,
Nigerian, Pakistani, Sudanese, Syrian, Turkish and Yemeni nationals, among
others.
The border jumping started with the election of US President Donald Trump,
who promised to expel more than 11 million undocumented migrants. AFP