Miami.— To the undocumented, the high desert temperatures of the southern border of the United States They don’t stop them, and neither do the frigid temperatures of the northern border.
According to a report from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the increase in the crossing of undocumented immigrants from Canada to the United States, only last January, was 846%; most of these people are of Mexican origin.
“It shouldn’t be like that, but the ease of getting to Canada without a visa has led some Mexicans to travel here and try to enter the United States,” he told THE UNIVERSAL Mónica Muro, Mexican in Canada. “The most difficult part, I think, is when they come with children in” winter times, when temperatures are below zero; for many, it is unbearable weather.
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The figures of the Border Patrol They are alarming for this area, but even so they do not represent even 1% of what happens on the southern border. In January, Border Patrol apprehended 367 people crossing without documents in the Swanton sector; Mostly Mexican, men and women. If all the months of January are added, of the last 12 years, CBP points out, the detainees are 344. Hence the disproportion of the crossings at the beginning of this year.
“You have to consider that Canada has suffered from a lack of labor since before the pandemic,” says Mónica, “and during the pandemic it increased; That is why the Canadian government turns a blind eye, from my point of view, so that migrants can enter even without papers. That is not the case of the Mexicans, here [en Canadá] we are welcome and we do not need a visa to arrive”.
Even though for some observers what is happening on the border with Canada is not cause for alarm, for others it is, because it could be the beginning of a serious problem for that country and the United States.
Global numbers for the first four months of the year US attorneywhich begins on October 1 of each year, show trends to start considering.
“Between October [de 2022] and January [de 2023] we detained 1,513 undocumented migrants who had crossed [a la Unión Americana] from Canada,” says a CBP spokesperson.
“If we take into account that in all of 2022 the detainees barely add up to just over a thousand people, we can have an idea of the relevance of the situation.”
Unlike the US southern border, where this problem has become what some politicians consider to be national security, and detention centers, despite their abundance, are saturated, “on this border [con Canadá] there is no history of crossings and mass arrests at any time of the year, so we have a very small detention area, so much so that with those we have detained in these four months they are already saturated”, describes the CBP spokesperson.
Just last February 14, the head of the Border Patrol from the Swanton sector, Robert García, made a call through Twitter warning that “the crossings of undocumented immigrants on the border between Canada and the United States continue despite the fact that the temperatures continue below freezing; Border Patrol agents detained 115 people from 12 countries, the majority being of Mexican origin. The dangerous climate has not been able to prevent this traffic, unfortunately”. He concluded with a desperate plea: “Don’t risk it!” The Swanton sector borders Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire.
On this northern border, although it is longer than the southern one, since it does not have a serious problem of people or drug trafficking, there are no walls or massive surveillance.
“In this part of the country and along the entire border [con Canadá] an average of 5 thousand agents are commissioned [de la Patrulla Fronteriza]”, says the CBP spokesperson. While on the southern border there is an average of 30 thousand.
On the Canadian side, the Royal Mounted Cavalry Police (RCMP, by its acronym in English) is in charge of monitoring its borders; however, they do not dedicate a large number of elements either, “first because there is no history of this type of problem and secondly because geography and temperatures are really the natural guardians. But we see that even so, the migrants come totally determined,” says the CBP.
He sector Swanton it is the most common for undocumented crossings from Canada, but some have also been reported in other sectors of British Columbia, the Washington border, and Alberta, the Montana border. The border between the United States and Canada measures 8,891 kilometers, while with Mexico it measures less than half, with 3,169 kilometers in total.
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