Reader\'s Digest Canada - 05.2020

the law, you don’t know what they’re

capable of until they’re fully processed.

Are they good people?”

Under a U.S.-Canada pact called the

Safe Third Country Agreement, people

cannot apply for asylum in Canada if

they’re coming from the U.S., which is

presumed to be safe. But this rule only

applies if the person seeking asylum

goes to an official border crossing. If

they sneak in from a different point of

entry, Canada is required by law to

consider their claim. Even as the U.S.

government was enforcing a ban on

Muslims from African countries, even

as its president was referring to African

nations as “shithole countries,” Canada

continued to send Black asylum seek-

ers back to the U.S., insisting that it

remained a safe place for them. There’s

no shortage of examples of how Amer-

ica is unsafe for Black people. But if

the alternative is Black people coming

here, it seems the U.S. is safe enough.

In November 2017, the federal gov-

ernment confirmed that of the 6,304

citizens of Haiti who had sought asy-

lum in Canada between February and

October 2017, only 298 had had their

claims finalized, and of those, only 29

had been accepted. Immigration, Ref-

ugees and Citizenship Minister Ahmed

Hussen, himself a refugee from Somalia,

explained that asylum claims were

only for people whom the government

deemed in genuine need of protection.

“It’s not for everyone,” he said.

As our media focused on the U.S.

threat to deny protection of Haitians

within its borders, little was written

about the already large population of

Haitian immigrants in Canada, many

of whom had sought refuge in response

to decades of violent interventions

in Haiti, including the ongoing armed

presence of Canadian and other United

Nations troops.

In 2004, under the pretense of

regional stabilization, Canada had

played a central part in the overthrow

of the democratically elected Haitian

government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

As Pascale Diverlus, a co-founder of

Black Lives Matter–Toronto and the

child of Haitian immigrants, explains,

“The federal Liberal government organ-

ized an assembly of Canadian, Amer-

ican and French leaders to discuss the

state of Haiti—with no actual Haitian

officials present. There, they decided to

“IF THEY’RE WILLING TO JUMP THE BORDER

AT NIGHT,” SAID A REEVE, “YOU DON’T KNOW

WHAT THEY’RE CAPABLE OF.”

reader’s digest

100 may 2020