Canada and US Signed Deal to Close Roxham Road a Year Before Announcement: Document
Despite Canada and the United States announcing details of the new Safe Third Country Agreement on March 24 during U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip to Ottawa, the details of the agreement were initialed nearly one year ago, according to U.S. government documents.
As of March 25, asylum-seekers at unofficial border crossing points between the two countries will be turned back. This comes after years of illegal immigrants making unsanctioned crossings at places such as Roxham Road, a border entry between New York state and the province of Quebec, in order to make asylum claims.
During Biden’s visit to Ottawa on March 23 and 24, changes were announced to the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), a bilateral treaty that came into effect in 2004. The treaty requires that illegal immigrants make their refugee claim in the first country they arrive in.
The agreement previously only made it illegal to make a claim at official border crossings, which left a loophole for migrants at any place that was not an official crossing between the U.S. and Canada. But under the announced changes, it is now illegal—with certain exceptions—to use any point along the 9,000-kilometre border to make a refugee claim.
These changes to the STCA, known as the Additional Protocol of 2022, meant that as of March 25, migrants trying to get into Canada through Roxham Road will be arrested and sent to an official border crossing. In exchange for the closing of the road, Canada will also accept an additional 15,000 asylum seekers from the U.S.
According to a document from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Additional Protocol of 2022 was agreed to by the two countries nearly one year ago. The document said that Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Sean Fraser signed the agreement in Ottawa, Canada on March 29, 2022, while Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas signed it in Washington DC, on April 15, 2022, respectively.
The Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship was not immediately available for comment.
Back in December 2021, La Presse reported that the federal government had quietly negotiated a new version of the STCA with the United States to close the loophole at the border.
During a joint press conference on March 24, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked by reporters why the government waited a year to announce the changes to the STCA. Trudeau responded that both governments had known for a while they “couldn’t just close Roxham Road and hope that this would resolve the issue,” because migrants would merely find other places to cross the border.
Trudeau said both Canada and the U.S. knew that applying the STCA to the entire border was the solution, but added “it takes complex processes to manage our borders, and that’s taken a few months to get all that in place so we could move forward with this announcement.”
“We have protected the integrity of our system and we continue to protect and live up to our obligations in terms of asylum seekers, but also we’re are continuing to be open to regular migration,” he said.
