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 News from Around the Americas | September 2007 
Illegals Flocking to Canada on Promise of Legalization
 Elysa Batista - Naples Daily News
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| | Jacques Sinjuste, president of the Jerusalem Haitian Community Center in East Naples, Fla., leaves one of his offices on Friday afternoon, Sept.21, 2007. Sinjuste's non-profit organization claims to help immigrants with legal problems but has been recently come under scrutiny by the Canadian immigration officials and other American non-profits for misleading illegal immigrants to Canada for asylum. (David Albers/Daily News) |
Fast, easy freedom and legality.
That’s the promise that has sent hundreds of illegal Mexican immigrants from Southwest Florida running for the Canadian border.
But authorities, Canadian and American, say that if the pitch is too good to be true — it probably isn’t.
“Yes, it is a scam,” said Rivka Augenfeld of the Canadian Council for Refugees, a nonprofit immigrant rights group based in Montreal.
A Naples-based nonprofit has been taking $300-$400 “donations’’ for adults and $100 “donations’’ for children to fill out fake Canadian refugee applications and then is sending them to Detroit to cross the border to Windsor, a city of roughly 320,000 to 350,000 residents.
There Canadian authorities are dealing with the unexpected influx of migrants seeking to escape what they are saying is a law enforcement crackdown on illegal immigrants in the U.S.
“This is something that we never expected and more than that, it’s something that we’re not capable to deal with,” said Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis in an interview Friday. “Our resources are stretched to the maximum.”
Over the past week, about 225 Mexican immigrants, mostly from Southwest Florida, have crossed into Windsor — 20 of them arrived Thursday night. But once they get there they find that lodging is temporary and becoming legal takes more than a year.
So right now Windsor residents are footing $40,000, of the $200,000 bill it’s costing to house the applicants in hotels. The way the social services system works in Ontario, 80 percent is paid by the province while 20 percent is paid by the city.
“That’s why there is so much of a concern (of a continued influx),” said Francis.
Francis said that through interviews with the migrants, Canadian authorities discovered that the migrants were provided false information.
Many claimed they were told, that there was a Mexican refugee program in Canada and that asking for asylum would lead to a permanent residency fast.
Authorities were left to tell the migrants that there is no program to give them automatic residency and that instead they must go through a nearly yearlong process that does not guarantee them the right to stay.
“It’s the promise of what doesn’t exist,” said Augenfeld. “The idea that you can just apply as an economic refugee is not true. That category does not exist.”
Less than 13 percent of Mexican asylum applicants are accepted each year, said Francis, who on Friday asked Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for help with the issue — including possibly expediting the refugee claim process to avoid having the new arrivals having to wait up to a year to find out their fate.
“Instead of waiting that long, maybe we can accelerate the process,” said Francis. “I can only make the request and wait for a response.”
While Canadian authorities are calling it a scam that preys on the desperate, Jacques Sinjuste of the Jerusalem Haitian Community Center, or JHCC, in Naples said that he is providing a service to the community.
“What we do here is just fill out paper for people,” Sinjuste said in an interview Friday. “We don’t have any expertise in Canadian law. We download the form from the Freedom House Web site.”
Canadian law allows only certain people to make refugee claims. Two of those exceptions are Mexicans and Haitians.
Mexican nationals, do not need a visa to enter Canada due trade agreements, while Haitian national are not currently being deported from Canada due to the unstable situation in that country.
And for a donation of $300 per adult, $100 for children, JHCC volunteers fill out the roughly 10 pages of application forms. Many do pay the donation and the organization offers financial assistance to those who can’t, said Sinjuste.
According to Sinjuste, he’s been helping Haitian migrants apply for refugee status in Canada since 2000, with the help of a Detroit agency called Freedom House and that it was only recently that he’d begun helping the illegal Mexican community.
“I consider that my office is giving the service to the community,” said Sinjuste, who acknowledged that Canadian authorities had approached him to stop aiding those looking for a way into Canada.
“We don’t think anyone can ask us to stop doing that,” he said.
In spite of Sinjuste’s claims of a long-standing relationship with Freedom House, Pegg Roberts, the executive director for the Detroit-based nonprofit, said that her organization is not involved with Sinjuste.
“It’s a lie. There is no relationship,” said Roberts, adding that for more than a year Freedom House has been trying to get Sinjuste to stop using the shelter’ name. “As late as yesterday (Thursday) I told him, he could not use our name.”
Roberts said Freedom House does not charge a fee to fill out the free forms for refugee seekers, though it does ask for donations.
Sinjuste’s claims, she said, have brought nothing but grief and frustration to her organization, which provides a temporary home for survivors of persecution from around the world seeking legal shelter in the United States and Canada.
The majority of the shelter’s 40 current residents hail from the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Darfur.
“We have a 25-year history of working with asylum-seekers,” Roberts said. “I have no idea what he (Sinjuste) is doing, but I’m not a part of it. I hope it stops.”
Yet people such as Jose Castro, 52, a Mexican immigrant from Oaxaca, are still seeking out Sinjuste’s services.
“I found out through family friends,” said Castro, in Spanish outside of the JHCC offices in Naples.
Castro, who has been living in the U.S. for 12 years went to the group’s office to get a better understanding of the program he was told existed.
A growing fear for his family’s safety and future in Collier County is the driving force for his visit to the center on Friday.
“I asked about jobs (in Canada), if the trip there was safe and if I could travel with my family,” Castro said.
Donation costs did come up, he said, but they’re willing to negotiate down.
“There’s the possibility for help, if the whole family is going,” Castro said. “I told them that we didn’t have the money right know. It’s five of us.”
Whether or not there is a program, Castro said there aren’t many options left for his family in the U.S., so they’d give Canada a try.
If that means they get to Canada, and then had to go back to Mexico, Castro said he’d accept it.
“No other choice,” he said. |
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