The Future of Retail in the USA Embracing Online Shopping

It is always appreciated when a guest brings a meaningful gift. Prime Minister Trudeau had reason to be especially grateful for visiting US President Joe Biden's agreement to broaden the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) to include illegal migration at Roxham Road and all other sites along our shared border. It's something Canadian governments have been requesting for more than a decade, and Trudeau needed to appease a Quebec government whose patience with federal delay had, understandably, run out. Trudeau thought it was an ideal present.From my opinion, it's a good start. However, there are still too many loopholes, and the updated STCA will need to be strictly enforced if it is to serve as the deterrent that both countries hope it would. To understand why, consider what the STCA was and wasn't before the new protocol, as well as what the protocol implies it could be.Under the STCA, which was signed by Jean Chrétien and George W Bush in 2002 and went into effect in 2004, Canada and the United States agreed that if someone from a third country attempted to enter Canada from the United States or vice versa to claim asylum, they would be returned to the country where they first entered. This mirrored the 1951 Refugee Convention's premise that people should cease their journey from persecution in the first secure country they reach. There is no right to seek refuge by forum shopping.

There were exceptions to the STCA from the start

Most significantly, it only applied to potential asylum seekers who presented themselves at an official border crossing. If they landed at an inland port of entry by train or plane, it did not apply. And it didn't matter if you just stepped across the border. Naturally, this is what many migrants began to do, and Roxham Road, with its accessibility to public transportation and taxis, became the most popular and known illegal crossing point. In 2022, the RCMP intercepted 39,540 migrants along Canada's 5,524-mile border with the United States. Of those, 39,171, or 99 percent, crossed the border into Quebec, almost all at Roxham Road.There are other loopholes in the STCA, including one for people who have a relative in the nation but are otherwise ineligible to enter. The definition of "relative" is substantially broader than that used in other Canadian immigration regulations, and it includes adult siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews. This exclusion is further eased in reality by the fact that Canada does not normally ask individuals to prove their relationship. When I worked at the Department of Immigration, I heard that CBSA agents accepted phone conversations and difficult-to-verify or easily-forged unofficial paperwork as valid evidence. This provision remains, but it could be tightened if Canada required documentation from the official government or a DNA test to obtain it.

The recently revealed STCA protocol will close 

a critical loophole. It will allow Canada to send migrants back to the United States to seek asylum if they are arrested within 14 days of crossing the border, with a few exceptions. It is a big and welcome upgrade to an agreement that had grown as porous as our border. Quebec Premier Legault described it as a "great victory," which will undoubtedly come as a comfort to the prime minister.The regular detractors, of course, launched their frenzied condemnations, forecasting suffering and mayhem. They should be ignored. During the COVID pandemic, Canada and the United States tested a version of the current approach, and the amount of border crossings nearly dried up. That situation cannot be directly compared to today because travel from the migrants' countries of origin was also hampered by global travel restrictions, and the Biden administration's lax approach to the southern U.S. border has resulted in a significant increase in illegal migration there, which may have repercussions at the northern border. However, it demonstrates that cooperation and enforcement may make a difference.Contrary to opponents, the new agreement aligns Canada and the United States more closely with the letter and spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The convention is outdated in many ways, as one would expect from a 72-year-old pact, but Article 31, which expresses the notion that asylum shopping should be prohibited, is still applicable.

I've written about the negotiations for Article 31

but in short, the French delegation wanted assurances that the large number of refugees from Central and Eastern Europe who were in safe third-party countries bordering France would not be able to enter France to seek asylum. According to the spokesperson for the French government, "[t]o admit that a refugee who had settled temporarily in a reception country was free to enter another, would be to grant him a right of immigration which might be exercised for reasons of mere personal convenience."The British delegate contended that the language in the earlier draft of Article 31, which required a person crossing a border illegally to "show good cause" for his illegal entry into another country, addressed the French objection. The French disagreed, and in the end, their worries triumphed. The final text of Article 31 explicitly restricts its application to individuals "coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom [is] threatened in the sense of Article 1." That is the underlying idea of the original STCA, and the new protocol strengthens it.