illegal immigration
A blanket amnesty for illegal migrants would be a disaster for Canada: David L. Thomas for Inside Policy
From the Macdonald Laurier Institute
By David L. Thomas
The prospect of a general amnesty for illegals in Canada will be the final straw. How can there be any shred of integrity left in our immigration system if we reward those who broke the rules?
The Liberal government’s proposal to grant a pathway to citizenship to “undocumented” people who are in Canada illegally is a risky strategy and likely to backfire. It will be seen as an open invitation to billions of people around the world to come here, break our immigration laws, and eventually be rewarded for it.
In my years as an immigration lawyer, I met countless people who dreamed of one day possessing a Canadian passport. Holding one would unlock a world of opportunity in Canada. But it also has another attractive feature: Canadian passport-holders can travel visa-free to 188 countries. When I began my legal career, we used to say there were only about 20 “good passports” in the world – passports that allowed unrestricted travel abroad and a good standard of living in the home country. Given general rises in prosperity and geopolitical progress (think the fall of the Berlin Wall), I would argue the number of “good passports” has risen to about 45.
Of course, that means there are still around 155 “not-so-good passports” issued by other countries, where the majority of the world’s population happens to reside. Given that only a few countries actively promote immigration (Canada leads in this respect, followed closely by Australia and New Zealand) it is easy to see why Canadian citizenship is in such high demand.
Some activists argue there should be no borders – that “no one is illegal.” They are grossly underestimating the demand. If a border-free world popped into existence tomorrow, many estimated 250 million people would immediately choose to relocate. Some have put that number as high as 750 million. I believe these estimates are outdated and perhaps naïve. Surely the number today would be in the billions.
A recent survey suggested that 69 million Chinese would like to move to Canada, if they could. The same survey showed 137 million Chinese are considering moving to the US (Canada would be their second choice). Another survey indicated that almost 75 percent of Indians are seeking to emigrate, and 35 percent are actively working towards it (India has a population of 1.4 billion). A Gallup World Poll in 2017 showed a growing worldwide trend in the desire to relocate to a new country. In Sub-Saharan Africa, with a population of 1.24 billion, 33 percent indicated a wish to emigrate. In Nigeria alone, 48 percent indicated a desire to emigrate permanently (the population of Nigeria is 229 million).
Prior to 2017, Canada – surrounded by three oceans and neighbouring the United States – had reasonable control of its borders. Illegal border crossings were not that common. Some might recall in 1999 when four rusty ships washed ashore on western Vancouver Island, having transported 599 illegal migrants from Fujian, China. The federal government responded quickly – deporting 330 migrants and granting three dozen refugee status. As for the rest, well, they just disappeared.
Even though more than two hundred migrants slipped through the cracks during that 1999 event, that seems like a tremendous success compared to the open invitation Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made to the world in an infamous January 2017 tweet. In response to the inauguration of President Donald Trump and his promise to clamp down on illegal immigration, Trudeau posted on Twitter: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.”
Many undocumented migrants in America saw this as an open invitation to simply walk across our border. By the end of 2018, more than 50,000 people had crossed into Canada illegally, most of them through Roxham Road in Quebec, at the border with upstate New York.
In 2019, a CBC reporter made these observations about the Roxham Road crossing:
But the majority of those who come here to Plattsburgh, N.Y., by bus, train or plane have spent little time in the U.S., arriving on tourist visas with the intent of treading the footpath to Canada. When CBC News visited the crossing recently, in one day we met families and single travellers from Pakistan, Turkey, Yemen, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Eritrea, as well as a Palestinian family from the occupied territories. Some arrived with what appeared to be fresh baggage tags from overseas flights into New York. Others had made their way north from Mexico, South and Central America.
In 2017, Haitians who had overstayed their 2010 earthquake disaster-related visas in the United States formed the largest group of migrants illegally entering Canada. Trump had specially targeted this group, although, in the end, his administration made few deportations. By 2018, however, nearly 75 percent of illegal migrants at Roxham Road had freshly arrived from Nigeria. They had obtained valid US visitor visas in Nigeria, but it was widely believed to be part of a scheme in which the visa recipients understood they had to immediately leave the US by walking into Canada.
Trudeau could have easily stopped this charade at any time by amending the Safe Third County Agreement with the US (which he eventually did in 2023). But at the time, he instead dispatched then Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen to Nigeria to try to persuade US officials to stop issuing so many dubious visas.
Even though authorities have since closed Roxham Road and similar illegal crossing points, Canadians are still feeling the repercussions of this open-border policy – and will be for years. There are still about 7,300 refugee claimants being housed in 36 hotels, mostly in southern Ontario, who on average each cost Canadian taxpayers about $208 per day. The total price tag for Trudeau’s 2017 tweet is already in the billions of dollars and ongoing.
Without question, surely some of the 113,000 people who walked into Canada since 2017 are legitimate UN Convention-definition refugees. Equally clear is that many are economic migrants, and others are just queue-jumpers looking for an easy way in. Moreover, if you were an undocumented person in the US with criminal charges outstanding, a swift exit into Canada across Roxham Road would seem extremely attractive. You could arrive without identification and make up a new identity. Why not? We have no idea how many criminals or terrorists may have walked in.
In the 2000s, when I was still actively practicing immigration law, there were many Mexican citizens working illegally in Vancouver. It was the same in Toronto. Some years earlier, the Liberal government had dropped the visitor visa requirement for Mexican citizens. It resulted in a flood of people over-staying their lawful period of admission as well as a deluge of Mexican refugee claims made within Canada. In 2009, Prime Minister Stephen Harper put an end to the madness and required Mexican citizens to apply for visitor visas.
Canada has established, objective standards in place for determining which countries should be exempt from our visitor visa requirement. In 2016, Trudeau hosted Mexican President Enrique Nieto in Ottawa. Nieto urged Trudeau to remove the visitor visa requirement for Mexican citizens. Trudeau ignored the objective standards and promised Nieto he would do so. (This resulted in immediate protests from Bulgaria and Romania, who also didn’t meet our standards. To avoid controversy, Trudeau removed their visa requirements as well.)
Unfortunately, removing the visitor visa requirement for Mexicans turned out to (again) be an unmitigated disaster. For instance, in 2023, there were more than 25,000 inland refugee claims from Mexico alone. Fast forward to 2024, and Trudeau had no choice but to reverse his decision – since February of this year, most Mexicans are required to apply for a visitor visa.
Canada also has a poor record for removing failed refugee claimants as well as non-Canadians who have committed crimes in Canada. Most people who have been issued deportation letters since 2016 are still in Canada. Moreover, if Donald Trump is elected this fall, he has promised a massive deportation effort to deal with illegal immigrants in the US, many of whom may be tempted to illegally escape into Canada.
Marc Miller, the current immigration minister, estimates there are between 300,000 and 600,000 people living illegally in Canada –- but even he’s not sure. Unlike many other countries, Canada does not track the departure of non-Canadians. Therefore, it is quite easy for someone whose visitor visa, study permit, or work permit has expired to simply remain in Canada. No one will be knocking on their door because they just aren’t on the radar.
We could begin tracking departures as other countries do, or we could start seriously enforcing our deportation orders. However, this seems to be too much effort. The federal government is apparently attracted to a much easier solution: just let them stay.
Lobby groups like the Migrant Rights Network (MRN) are pressuring the government to offer an amnesty for all “undocumented” migrants in Canada, and to grant permanent status to their family members upon arrival in the future. At a recent press conference calling for amnesty, the MRN estimated that between 20,000 and 500,000 people without immigration status are currently living in Canada.
Since 2017, the City of Toronto has celebrated “Undocumented Residents Day” and this year the City hosted a forum where activists spoke up to encourage the federal government to grant permanent residence to people living in Canada without authorization. Some of the speakers blamed “white supremacy” for shortcomings in our legal immigration system. However, the majority of legal immigrants to Canada have been non-white in every year since 1971.
Shortly after the 2021 federal election, Trudeau issued a mandate letter for his new Immigration Minister, Sean Fraser, that ordered him to explore an amnesty solution. More recently, Minister Miller commented, “There is no doubt that we have made a conscious decision to be an open country.” In May, Trudeau told reporters, “People who aren’t here regularly need to be supported and taken care of. There needs to be either a pathway towards regularization and citizenship, which I know the (immigration) minister is working on.” These recent comments by Trudeau and Miller suggest the Liberals are seriously considering an announcement of an amnesty in the near future.
Until recently, most Canadians were in favour of Canada’s immigration system. The reality today is that most Canadians feel that our immigration levels are too high, with the highest anti-immigration sentiment in decades. Even 42 percent of recent immigrants feel the numbers are excessive. Recently, the Bank of Canada also sounded the alarm, blaming record levels of immigration for driving up the cost of housing.
It is reckless, and possibly, dangerous for the federal government to ignore these warnings. Without broad public support, Canada’s immigration system is doomed. It also risks heightened levels of racism and xenophobia once the broad support is gone.
The prospect of a general amnesty for illegals in Canada will be the final straw. How can there be any shred of integrity left in our immigration system if we reward those who broke the rules? I spoke recently to a retired government immigration program manager who concurs: “An amnesty is pure madness,” he said, “and crushing in its unfairness to all those who have played by the rules.”
What message would a general amnesty send to legal migrants to our country? Why would others go through normal channels to come here? Would an amnesty now undermine future deportation orders? Why would failed refugee claimants or convicted criminals depart Canada? If Canada grants amnesty once, surely Canada will do it again, once the number of illegals bloats again.
If there is any doubt about that, consider the current illegal immigration crisis gripping the United States. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping immigration reform bill into law. Sold as a crackdown on illegal immigration, it called for tighter security at the Mexican border, with employers facing strict penalties for hiring undocumented workers. As part of the bill, the US government offered amnesty with a path to permanent status to about 3 million undocumented migrants. Supposedly a one-time amnesty, it was to be followed up with strict border controls and other measures to make sure the number of illegals never grew to such a large number again.
Reagan’s amnesty plan was anything but a panacea. Rather, it acted as an invitation to billions of would-be migrants to come to America and break its immigration laws. Although it’s impossible to know the exact number, some estimate the number of illegals in the US today to be around 22 million. Canada is on the cusp of making the very same mistake.
David L. Thomas is a lawyer and mediator in British Columbia and a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. From 2014–2021, he served as the chairperson of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Ottawa.
illegal immigration
Terror Attack in Chicago? Illegal Immigrant Charged for Shooting Jewish Man
From the Center for Immigration Studies
By Todd Bensman
The New York Post and Fox News are reporting that Abdallahi crossed the U.S. Southwest border in March 2023, that San Diego-area Border Patrol under Washington, D.C., orders waved him in just like millions of other strangers, and that he should never have been in the country to shoot at Americans in the first place.
In a shooting that bears the hallmarks of a terror attack, 22-year-old Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi of Mauritania stands charged with opening fire on an identifiably orthodox Jewish man walking to synagogue in Chicago, severely wounding him while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before engaging police in an extended gun-battle that landed the West African in a hospital facing a long prison term. The victim survived the attack.
For days afterward, a downplaying Chicago media could not bring itself to report Abdallahi’s immigration status as the national presidential election campaign debate was reaching its fevered apogee, centered on the public safety consequences of the historic mass migration border crisis in flooded American cities like Chicago.
But now, the New York Post and Fox News are reporting that Abdallahi crossed the U.S. Southwest border in March 2023, that San Diego-area Border Patrol under Washington, D.C., orders waved him in just like millions of other strangers, and that he should never have been in the country to shoot at Americans in the first place.
Jewish leaders in Chicago expressed outrage that Cook County’s progressive George Soros-backed State‘s Attorney Kim Foxx (who leaves office next year) has not charged Abdallahi yet with a state hate crime, albeit police had not been able to interview the alleged shooter as of this week — and determine a chargeable motive — because of his wounds.
But Chicago’s Jewish community, U.S. lawmakers with national security oversight authorities, the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns, and all the national media could be asking far more consequential questions that are essential to serve broader U.S. national interests.
Far More Important Questions
While it may be too early to determine whether this qualifies as an act of terrorism in violation of federal terrorism laws, is the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force even investigating the prospect that co-conspirators are still out there plotting next moves, that foreign actors back in Mauritania directed Abdallahi, and if federal terrorism charges are in the offing?
Local hate crime charges aside for just a minute, is President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice investigating anything at all about Abdallahi’s alleged shooting attack?
If the answer to these questions is a universal “no”, and the FBI is not all over one or more of these issues, lawmakers and the media are obliged to demand an answer from FBI Director Christopher Wray to this question: Why not?
If the answer is “yes”, then, whew — and great. But that’s just for starters.
National Security Vetting Failure and Just Pure Luck at the Land Borders
Congress, reporters, Jewish communities, and all Americans deserve to know exactly how the Border Patrol handled Abdallahi after his March 2023 illegal entry into California, starting with a timeline of how and when agents ran his name and biometrics through national security databases. These are questions for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas or the leaders of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Reportedly, Abdallahi did not hit on any terrorism or criminal databases when Border Patrol detained him in San Diego Sector.
But was he ever detained and referred to the Border Patrol’s Tactical Terrorism Response Team or ICE intelligence officers for extended terrorism-related interviews? That’s what is supposed to happen with “special interest aliens”, who get assigned that tag if they hail from designated countries of terrorism concern like Mauritania. It’s doubtful that any interview was conducted, given the historic volumes of special interest aliens coming in from around the world during the Biden border crisis, Mauritanians among them in historically high volumes.
We must ask because high risk is suggested by Border Patrol encounters with a national record-breaking 400 border-crossers who hit on the FBI’s terrorism watch list in the more than three years of the Biden mass migration crisis, and that, while it’s good they were noticed and caught, far too many got accidentally released into America during the crush of humanity the administration’s policies caused.
One was an illegal border crosser from Senegal, in Abdallahi’s terrorist-inhabited neck of the woods, arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs in New York on a warrant from back home for “terroristic activities”.
According to material obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies through a Freedom of Information Act request, Border Patrol apprehended 18,260 Mauritanians illegally crossing the southern border from 2021 through December 2023.
ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Murabitoun, and other violent Islamic extremist groups operate throughout the Sahel region of northwest Africa, which includes Mauritania, according to many credible sources about international terrorism. In May 2023, four jihadists convicted of terrorism crimes escaped during a deadly prison break there.
Any abdication from past duty to conduct face-to-face interviews with Mauritanians occurs as the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. intelligence community began publicly warning, in both the 2024 and 2025 public Homeland Threat Assessments, of a heightened threat of border-crossing terrorism.
“Individuals with terrorism connections are interested in using established travel routes and perceived permissive environments to facilitate their access to the United States,” the DHS assessment for 2025, released on October 2, re-states. “Over the next year, we expect some individuals with terrorism ties … will continue their efforts to exploit migration flows and the complex border security environment to enter the United States.”
The First American Whose Luck Ran Out?
Americans have gotten lucky so far.
We know that earlier this year, the FBI rolled up eight Tajikistani border-crossers in a vast, multi-state counter-terrorism wiretap investigation that featured bomb-making talk but was pushed out of the news by choices to deport them rather than charge them with terrorism crimes that would have led to very public — and politically damaging to Democrats — court proceedings during the presidential campaign featuring criticism of the border crisis. In September, Canadian and U.S. counterterrorism agencies intercepted a Pakistani immigrant let into Canada as he attempted to cross south into New York with co-conspirators planning to massacre Jews at synagogue during the 2024 High Holy Days services.
In June 2024, a federal court prosecution in Sacramento convicted a Russian national from the Caucuses region of terrorism charges a few years after his illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossing. Mura Kurashev sent money to terrorists in Syria to buy battle motorcycles and guns, but the investigating FBI agent said he’d probably have conducted an attack inside the United States himself had he not been arrested in 2021.
In February 2024, the DOJ convicted an Iraqi asylum seeker of plotting to bring in over the southern border a team of assassins to murder former President George W. Bush.
This case in Chicago presents a special occasion that demands action from U.S. bastions of government accountability in national security matters who should get to work with this last question in mind:
Is the Jewish Chicago victim the first American whose luck finally ran out?
Great Reset
A One-Stop Shop for Illegal Migration Reveals Ongoing Plans for Illegal Immigration
From the Center for Immigration Studies
By Todd Bensman
UN/NGO ‘mall’ under construction in southern Mexico shows they expect continued illegal flow to the U.S.
A 75,000-square-foot mega-mall, built to enable industrial-scale illegal immigration to the U.S. southern border, is almost online here in this key entry city in southern Mexico just across the border from Guatemala.
Scheduled to open in December, the mall suggests that powerful global agencies, the United Nations key among them, are bullish on a long-term future of continued heavy U.S.-bound illegal migrant traffic through Mexico – no matter the outcome of the November 5 American presidential election.
Those bullish investors are the dozens of migration-oriented UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have already plowed hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money into constructing a permanent network of way stations for thousands of miles along the migration routes from South America to the U.S. border during the four years of the Biden-Harris administration.
The record hundreds of millions of dollars in aid is distributed at the way station network in the form of cash cards, cash in envelopes, food, vouchers for onward travel and lodging, medical treatment, pharmaceuticals, legal counseling, and much more. (See: “UN Budgets Millions for U.S.-Bound Migrants in 2024”.) This aid has without doubt helped the UN and its growing constellation of NGOs keep the masses moving north through Tapachula in record numbers toward irresistible Biden border policies that have welcomed across arrivals in historic millions. (See: “Biden Admin. Sends Millions to Religious Nonprofits Facilitating Mass Illegal Migration”.)
The UN and NGOs are betting on a busy future in Mexico. Going forward, the purpose of this one strategically located facility is to “respond comprehensively to the needs of people who arrive in Mexico … migrant refugees who travel together from all continents, and arrive in Tapachula in need of a response or attention”, Giovanni Lepri, the Mexico representative for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters when Mexico’s foreign ministry announced it in April 2024.
But the Tapachula mall represents a far more expansive billion-dollar migration-route safety net constructed during the Biden-Harris years using record-breaking U.S. taxpayer contributions.
It plugs into two other big one-stop-migration malls erected in the northern Mexico cities of Monterrey and Tijuana. These gleaming new Mexican facilities, and plenty of other UN and NGO substations in Mexican towns and cities, form the final terminus of the trails to the United States lined with pots of U.S. taxpayer money. And they are representative of what’s happening throughout Latin America.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which received $1.9 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023 (compared to $377 million in 2019) for migration assistance throughout Latin America, started building the Tapachula facility on land donated by Chiapas State as part of the deal with Mexico to run it.
The UNHCR, UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNICEF, and dozens of private, often religion-based, NGOs scattered around Tapachula will work alongside one another under one massive roof here — evidently planning a years-long collaboration.
None of the UN/NGO pots of gold are exactly a secret but are relatively hard to find for the uninitiated. And harder to grasp as connected to domestic American policies or as a legitimate point of political debate.
The UN’s 2024 update to the “Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan” (RMRP for short), a UNHCR and IOM planning and budget document, lays out in detail that it planned to hand out nearly $1.6 billion in 17 Latin America countries using its network of 248 different NGOs. (For the complete list of involved groups, see p. 268, here, and explore their activities further with this interactive tool).
That was on top of the 2023-2024 RMRP plan, which called for 228 NGOs (all listed on p. 268 of the list of involved groups) to spend $1.72 billion on trailside assistance to mass migration that all know will illegally pass through many countries and, finally, breach the U.S. border.
Hundreds of millions of dollars for all of this comes straight from U.S. taxpayers in the form of sharply increased US State Department bequeathals, USAID grants, and flexible spending contributions to the UNHCR and IOM.
Too Far for Average Americans to See
For an idea of how U.S. tax money is spent to flood the American border, the far northwest Colombian town of Necocli provides a window. This is a major staging town for migrants preparing to boat across the Gulf of Uraba for smuggler-guided backpack trips through the so-called “Darien Gap” jungle passage that leads into Panama and eventually Mexico.
In Necocli, the UN and NGO agencies have arrayed themselves in something like an outdoor swap meet of NGO booths and an IOM mobile bus office on a few acres next to the gulf beach, the Center for Immigration Studies observed during an August 2024 research trip to the region. The Jewish NGO Cadena was set up in a booth next to the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA).
NGO and UN workers there said they provide a variety of trail advice — and plenty of supplies to the immigrants, to include socks, underwear, backpacks, bug repellant, water filters, sunscreen, and Vaseline.
And food.
“Like things easy to carry so they can eat and be done with it,” a Cadena worker said.
ADRA provides children’s classes thrice weekly on how to avoid sexual predators among the strange men traveling the Darien Gap.
On this day, a Cadena worker said she’d given out thousands of food items such as packaged soup to more than 3,000 migrants during the previous few months, showing the last of it: a box with a handful of granola bars she hoped to hand out soon so she could go home.
What about critics who say NGOs like Cadena are helping migrants break the laws of many countries?
“As an organization,” the Cadena worker responded. “We’re not here to judge. We’re just here to provide a service.”
”But aren’t you helping them migrate?”
“Only by giving them the things that I mentioned, not money or fare, just certain resources for the trip,” she explained.
UNHCR workers carrying iPads interacted with groups of migrants sitting in chairs under open-air shelters, surveying them and their needs for the trail ahead. The IOM workers hand out hygiene kits to women, but had run out of the kits some days earlier.
Across the Uraba Gulf in the staging town of Acandi, the Clan del Gulfo paramilitary controls the human smuggling operations into the Darien Gap. The cartel runs two migrant camps where the migrants are brought for final journey preparations.
The center gained permission to access one of the camps, “Camp 1”. Inside, the Center found NGOs providing medical services, legal counseling, and food.
Furthermore, Colombian banks also have been allowed to set up a money-wiring service so that migrants could pay their foot guides.
All involved could not possibly be unaware that the people they are assisting intend to break the immigration laws of a half dozen countries up trail, including, ultimately, illegally breaching the American border.
A Bright Future for Mass Migration?
The UN and NGO’s migration advocacy industrial complex is now preparing its 2025-2026 plan for the trails of Latin America.
A request for input from its NGO partners suggests an ambitious coming year of providing “cash and voucher assistance”, “food security”, “humanitarian transportation”, “shelter”, and most other basic human needs.
Who will be the recipients?
Refugees and migrants in-transit (of all nationalities) who cross an international border.
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