Sharing my experiences working with refugees. 120 stories for 120 days.

Day 25

Growing up on the US-Canadian border, I never really thought of Canada as a different country. It was just another place with hockey, Tim Hortons, and good beer. It wasn't until I worked at an organization called Vive La Casa, on Buffalo's west side, that I started to have a more fuller understanding of the difference between the US and Canada. Vive, a shelter for asylum seekers, was also a legal service provider and assisted individuals to enter Canada to make refugee claims. I started volunteering at Vive shortly before September 11th, 2001.

There have been some alarming stories in the news as of late regarding refugees or asylum seekers crossing the border to Canada, suffering from hyperthermia, fleeing frantically from USC Customs and Border Protection, and leaving behind everything. These stories remind me of my work at Vive and sadly are a reflection of the continued challenges, burdens, and overly complicated processes for those seeking asylum here in the United States.

In 2004, the US and Canada negotiated a 32 point Smart Boarder Action Plan. One part of the plan was a Safe Third Country Agreement that essentially requires a person to file a claim for protection in the first safe country they arrive in. Should a person traveling from Pakistan to Canada to make an asylum claim transits through the US, they would be required to make their claim in the US. What always seemed ironic to me is that significantly more people were traveling to Canada from the US to ask for protection and rarely did someone arrive in Canada and attempt to enter the US to make a refugee claim.

At the time the Safe Third Country Agreement was signed, asylum approval ratings by Immigration Judges ranged from 2% to 96%. Asylum applicants cases were often decided by two key factors: who was hearing their case and if they had an attorney representing them. Meanwhile, in Canada, applicant approval ratings reflected a more consistent and fair system. And there were drastic differences in approval ratings based on country of origin. For example, the US had a 32% approval rating for asylum claims from Colombia, while Canada approved 86% of claims.

A 30 day window was announced for a late November implementation, of the Safe Third Country Agreement, resulting in a flood of asylum seekers attempting to enter Canada to seek protection. Literally hundreds of people, many from South America, flooded through the doors of Vive to be processed for protection in Canada. As an organization, we acted as the flood gates for Canadian Border Protection, arranging appointments for refugee claimants, organizing transportation, ensuring appropriate language support, and providing a free legal orientation to claimants as they waited to be processed. As the date of implementation grew closer, more and more people arrived and a backlog of over 500 people sat in our small shelter, hoping to ask the government of Canada to give them protection.

On the day the Agreement was signed we were forced to take action. After providing legal counsel and explaining all options to those waiting to enter Canada, we agreed to walk with the claimants across the US-Canadian border so each individual could step on to Canadian soil and ask for protection. US and Canadian advisors converged as hundreds of people waited to be processed at the Fort Erie border station. I remember standing there, in the freezing rain, with my copy of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, while being issued an official Denial of Entry to Canada and then forcefully being returned to the US.

After September 11th, the US implemented the Patriot Act, Special Registration, and many other immigration related actions that left asylum seekers and immigrants in precarious situations, fearing deportation and unfair treatment. Many witnessed their friends and neighbors being detained or deported and feared returning to their country of birth. They believed they had no choice but to leave behind their lives in the US to ask for protection in Canada. They were desperate. Much like those fleeing to Canada today, they did not believe they would have a fair hearing of the refugee claim in the United States and desperately feared being deported back to a country were they faced persecution. They did not believe they were safe in the US.

Its been more than a decade since the implementation of the Safe Third Country Agreement and we find, once again, refugees fleeing to Canada for safety. The world has changed dramatically and for some time I felt that we were making strides in efforts to fulfill our humanitarian obligations to protect asylum seekers and refugees.

The Trump administration continues to promise that a new Executive Order will be signed, creating further restrictions on refugees and legal immigration. Wide sweeping immigration raids, large scale detentions of immigrants, and growing anti-immigrant, anti-refugee sentiment are creating an escalated fear among legal and illegal immigrant populations throughout the United States. This movement of refugees and immigrants across the US-Canadian border will continue, and people will be hurt or may possibly die. I am not ready to watch more people risk their lives to make refugee claims in Canada because the US is no longer a safe place for them.

Whether here legally, illegally, as a refugee, or as someone seeking protection, each and every person deserves to be treated humanly, with dignity and respect. That is the America I believe in and the America I will fight for.

#IStandWithRefugees