The United States and Canada have reached an agreement to let each country turn away asylum seekers who reach their border at unofficial crossings, striking the long-sought deal shortly before President Biden began his first visit to Canada as president.
The new arrangement, to be announced on Friday, is aimed at helping Canada stem the rising number of asylum seekers who have crossed the border from the United States in Upstate New York. In exchange, Canada has agreed to create a pathway for 15,000 refugees to legally enter the country, an effort to help mitigate the growing influx of migrants entering the United States from Mexico.
Canadian officials have for years pressed the United States to extend the Safe Third Country Agreement to cover unofficial crossings as well, and American officials had said in recent days it would be a topic of the Biden-Trudeau meeting. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling to Canada on Air Force One on Thursday that Biden and Trudeau would have more to share Friday about any agreement.“We’re seeing an increase in irregular migration going north into Canada, which reflects the regional and global migration challenge, as we’ve been talking about,” she said. “We’re committed to working with them to address it, including by prioritizing orderly and safe migration through regular pathways.
While it has taken Biden two years into his presidency to visit Canada, his first call to a foreign leader after becoming president was to Trudeau.Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrived on Thursday evening, where they were greeted by Mary Simon, the governor general of Canada, and then joined Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, for a private dinner at their residence.
The trip marks Biden’s first official visit to Ottawa since late 2016, when he was the outgoing vice president. At a state dinner that year in Biden’s honor, he gave a toast noting that his first wife’s family was from Toronto and said his sons grew up wanting to be Mounties. But while Trudeau has a far warmer personal relationship with Biden than Trump, irritants remain. They include U.S. trade policies that Canadians view as protectionist as well as issues related to defense and security.
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