Immigration: Canada caught between the Devil and the Deep Sea
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With US President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement to deport thousands of illegal immigrants, Canada, whose open-door policy has adversely affected its demography, economy, and international relations, and turned it into a conduit for entry into America, is facing a huge task of dealing with the aliens flooding this North American country.
At home, nearly 5 million temporary permits granted to immigrants will expire by December 2025, raising questions about their future as Canada prepares for the parliamentary elections scheduled before October 2025. Immigration Minister Marc Miller addressed these concerns during his testimony to the House of Commons Immigration Committee recently, the media reported.
Illegal immigrants are seen as the most important reason for the plummeting Canadian economy and a host of problems like expensive housing, inflation, social tension, and strained diplomacy, among others.
Temporary foreign workers in Canada include those on work permits, study permits, and asylum claimants engaged in a variety of employment, including the transport sector controlled by the Khalistan-supporting Sikhs.
Conservative MP Tom Kmiec questioned the government’s preparedness to manage these huge numbers of temporary visa holders. “How will the government ensure these individuals leave the country if required?” he asked. Minister Miller claimed the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) is actively enforcing immigration laws and that many are expected to leave voluntarily.
Kmiec also raised the issue of 766,000 study permits expiring by December 2025. Miller clarified, “Some students will renew their permits or apply for post-graduate work permits, which provide options for extending their stay.”
In 2022, Indian citizens represented 27 percent of all new permanent residents in Canada.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who rushed to Florida last week to keep Trump in good humor, noted that while temporary foreign workers are crucial to the workforce, the pace of immigration has outstripped the capacity of housing and social services. The new caps aim to strike a balance between the economic demand for workers and the infrastructure needed to support them.
In a related development, the bilateral border between Canada and the United States has seen an increase in illegal immigration by Indian nationals into the US over the past few years. Data from the US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) indicates that Indian nationals made up 22 percent of encounters at the northern border this year.
In 2022, 109,535 individuals attempted illegal crossings from Canada into the US, with Indians alone accounting for nearly 16 percent of them. The number rose in 2023, with 189,402 attempted crossings, of which 30,010 were Indian nationals. This year, the figures climbed further, with 43,764 Indians—close to 22 percent of the total 198,929—attempting illegal entry.
Even before his inauguration as the 47th US President on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump warned that Canada must resolve the border issue to avoid facing a 25 percent tariff. This forced PM Trudeau’s unannounced visit to Florida on Friday last week, along with Canada’s Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, who is in charge of the USCBP’s counterpart, the Canadian Border Services Agency, reports said.
The Niskanen Center, a Washington DC-based think tank, attributed the rise to Canada’s more accessible visa processes. In its September 2023 report, it noted that the average processing time for a Canadian visitor visa was 76 days, compared to nearly a year for a US appointment. The US-Canada border, being longer and less guarded than the US-Mexico border, is also seen as an easier option.
Other reasons for the flooding of illegal immigrants across the US-Canada borders were human trafficking networks and the Biden administration’s relatively open borders in 2023 which suddenly swelled the number of aliens. However, once they reached Canada, they found that the country’s economy was not doing well, which prompted them to attempt illegally enter the US.
This was among the key reasons for re-election of Donald Trump in the US as he has promised to deport these illegal immigrants in large numbers.
