1/ Thread. Children shouldn’t be separated from their parents. We need to lead with compassion, and in doing so have an honest conversation about the migrant crisis that the world seems to be incapable of having right now, in order to come up with sound immigration policy.
2/ Many people who illegally cross the US or Canadian borders and claim asylum do not have valid asylum claims. While some do, most are coming to our countries in search of better economic opportunity. The asylum claim acceptance rates show this.
3/ The volume of asylum claims in Canada alone, resulting from the Roxham Road crisis, means years long backlogs to process asylum claims. In the interim, claimants are entitled to be housed and provided with the social supports our laws in Canada afford to them.
4/ Years between claims and processing means that a) it’s sometimes more difficult to prove or disprove credibility of claims and b) a claimant is in limbo, making it difficult to put down roots, in turn more dependence on social supports.
5/ The Liberals have no plan to manage this. No plan to pay for the billions of dollars of processing, social supports, and eventual removals that high volumes of false asylum claims create. No plan to deal with the wait time impact this has on those legally trying to enter.
6/ So what do we do? One side argues as though every person making an asylum claim in Canada has a valid claim, and that we should rescind agreements that provide some modicum of management of the system (eg Safe Third Country Agreement).
7/ This argument fails to recognize that a country cannot have both generous social supports and open borders, without something becoming completely unsustainable over time.
8/ This side also argues that we should be prioritizing hundreds of millions of dollars of resources to process their claims - more judges, immigration officers, etc all for those who illegally enter and then claim asylum (many of whom have no hope of their claims being accepted)
9/ So what do we do instead? First, recognize that economic migration is not the same as those migrating from genocide, ethnic cleansing, or life threatening persecution.
10/ Encourage those who want to come to Canada to build a better economic life to do so legally. At the same time, introduce policy to disincent the abuse of our asylum system.
11/ Prioritize resources spent on immigration processing to those legally trying to enter the country, in the context of aiming for a balanced budget and lower taxes for Canadians.
12/ Enforce our sovereign right and responsibility to make sure those who truly are the world’s most vulnerable are prioritized in our asylum system, and manage that system to integration and compassion, not entitlement and false hope.
13/ This is why myself and my party have been confronting the Liberals to stop their blatant mismanagement of Canada’s immigration system.
14/ I am proud of my party’s pragmatic approach to this issue.
