Hundreds are being ‘dumped’ from Quebec into the Niagara region only to be told they’re not wanted, advocates say, as governments give few specifics on next steps
More than 2,841 asylum seekers have been transferred to Niagara Falls by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada since last June, spread across more than 1,400 hotel rooms in the city after being shuttled on from their arrival in Quebec.
“These people are taken from Roxham Road in Quebec, and they’re put into a bus, and they’re dumped. And the word is dumped – they’re dumped here,” Ms. Saintil said. The migrants did not choose Niagara Falls. They ended up here after being repeatedly shuffled along by American and then Canadian authorities – perpetually treated as someone else’s problem. Regardless of where their journeys began, these migrants have oftenin an effort to flee violence, persecution and poverty – and have faced hostility along the way.
Now in Canada, the migrants are finding themselves unwelcome in Quebec, too. With the numbers at Roxham Road continuing to rise – close to 40,000 migrants entered Canada there last year – Quebec’s Premier François Legault has protested the “strain” the influx has put on his province’s social services and urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shut it down, or send them elsewhere.
“A tourist is going to spend money in restaurants, the attractions, the casinos, the wineries ... whereas these folks are just staying in the rooms,” he said. “A lot of people are counting on it to feed their families and pay their mortgages and pay their rents. So we’re asking, ‘What’s the plan?’ ” On a Friday evening almost one week after the mayor’s meeting with the immigration minister, the lobby of the Ramada hotel on Lundy’s Lane was crammed with 100 or so people lined up for dinner.
Truck drivers by trade, the men are eager to get their work permits, learn English and begin to find work. But they landed in Niagara only a few days earlier, bused in from Quebec after their arrival at Roxham Road. At the YMCA of Niagara, Deanna D’Elia, manager of employment and immigrant services, has scrambled to move some part-time workers to full-time in an effort to address the spiralling need.
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