Thread by @acoyne

The Tories’ @MichelleRempel claimed again today that the govt is trying to “normalize” the current rush of asylum claimants crossing the border illegally. This is absurd. It’s not normalizing something if you can’t stop it. It’s acknowledging reality…

cbc.ca/news/politics/…

Certainly Rempel has no serious plan to stop it. You can’t expand the Safe Third Country Agreement to the entire border without the Americans’, er, agreement. And they aren’t going to agree since that would mean having to take in more asylum seekers — the ones we turned back.

Neither can we “just toss them back,” as some have claimed, in defiance of the STC and without a hearing. Leave aside the moral, constitutional and int’l treaty objections to this. As a practical matter, we can’t force the Americans to take anybody they don’t want to.

That’s why we cajoled them into signing the STC deal in the first place: to stem the flow of claimants, post 9/11, fleeing the US for Canada, while averting our eyes from the reason for it: the more restrictive American refugee determination system. They did it as a favour to us.

At the time the STC was introduced, critics warned that turning back asylum claimants at the official ports of entry would simply lead thousands of them to try crossing at unofficial points. They were right. The number ebbed and flowed, then peaked again in 2017.

But even if you could declare the whole border an official port of entry, allowing us to turn back claimants wherever they arrived, and even if you could get the Americans to agree to take them, that again doesn’t solve the basic, *practical* problem of enforceability.

The border is 5,000 miles long. To turn them back, you have to catch them. And the knowledge they would be turned back if caught would make them determined not to be caught.
So instead of presenting themselves for arrest once across, as they do now, they’d cross in secret.

Obvsly it would be better if they crossed at the official ports. But the current process at least ensures we know who and where they are. For their part, knowing they will get a hearing gives them an incentive to be caught. Take away the hearing, you take away the incentive.

In the real world, neither side gets all of what they want. Those enforcing the border can’t control it w/ absolute certainty. Those trying to cross it don’t get certainty of admission: they just get a hearing. It’s a messy, imperfect bargain, the way a lot of law enforcement is.

That’s what this dilemma is about. It isn’t about ivory-tower open-borders types vs hard-headed realists. It’s about practical reality versus wishful thinking. It’s the self-professed “realists” baying to “get control of our borders” who have their heads in the clouds.

PS: There is one possible modification to the STC the US might agree to, as I’ve suggested before. Right now the rule is: try to cross at on official port, we turn you back w/ no hearing. Cross anywhere else, you get a hearing. The incentive is obvious: to cross illegally.

Suppose we reversed this. Show up and apply at an official port of entry, you get a hearing, guaranteed. Try to cross anywhere *else*, you get sent back. So now the incentive is to to cross legally, through an official port.

Why might the US agree to this? Because it prob’ly means more asylum seekers leaving the US for Cda: instead of taking some irregular, circuitous, possibly dangerous route, you just show up.
The bonus for us: they show up. No need to arrest them, everything’s by the book etc.

Anyway, just a thought. Probably wouldn’t work either.