Rising tide of refugees

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This article was published 17/09/2015 (3456 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is a growing surge of refugee claimants quietly slipping into Canada in the dark of night at Emerson.

“Most local residents don’t see them because they arrive under the cover of darkness while people are sleeping,” said Wayne Arseny, Emerson’s former mayor. “They don’t want be to be spotted.”

Last summer, 56 asylum-seekers were “intercepted” in the border community, the Canada Border Services Agency says. This summer, 86 were picked up, with the numbers doubling from July to August. The majority are Somali, like Yayha Samatar, the refugee claimant who made international headlines in August when he swam into Canada via the Red River.

“We’re quite familiar with incidents of that nature,” said Arseny.

Most walk across the open border, crossing unfenced farm fields and skirting border officers who staff the legal point of entry.

For some reason, many asylum-seekers wrongly assume the river runs along the border, and swimming across it will get them into Canada, he said.

“They get to the other side and think they’re in Canada, but they’re still in the U.S.” It’s a dangerous gamble, he said. “The Red River is not a very welcoming river.” After crossing the mighty Red “they’re in mud up to their waist.”

Samatar, a human rights worker who fled Somalia a year earlier, didn’t make it across the Red but swam in it far enough north to cross into Canada at Emerson. There, a Good Samaritan helped him until RCMP took him to see Canada Border Services Agency officers at the port of entry. Samatar had nowhere to go to wait for his Sept. 30 refugee protection hearing, so CBSA called settlement agencies in Winnipeg looking for help for Samatar.

Karin Gordon, settlement services manager at Hospitality House Refugee Ministry in Winnipeg, drove to Emerson to get him.

She’s since driven to the border several times to pick up other refugee claimants, all of whom are Somali.

The largest Somali community in the United States is in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, where Samatar found someone to drive him 645 kilometres to just south of the Canadian border near Emerson.

Gordon said she put two asylum-seekers on buses to other Canadian cities where they have family connections. Three others are staying at Hospitality House’s residence in Winnipeg, including a woman who was so ill at the border she was sent by ambulance to Health Sciences Centre.

“They were worried she had TB,” said Gordon. It turned out the woman didn’t have tuberculosis. “She was hospitalized for a number of days with nowhere to go.”

Hospitality House’s mandate is to help privately sponsored refugees come to Canada, not people who arrive and claim to be refugees.

“We know nothing much about refuge claimants,” said Gordon. “But we’re all human beings — we’re all the same under the skin. When we can, we will help.” She said the Manitoba sponsorship agreement holders are meeting Sept. 24 to learn more about refugee claimants.

“We’re here to help people and the general category of people we help is refugees,” said Tom Denton, executive director of Hospitality House. “Even though we didn’t organize the arrival of these people, they need help. It’s our duty to help them, and to the extent that we can we will. It’s part of our mission. It’s part of our faith.”

In Emerson, Arseny said the community goes with the flow of people illegally crossing the border.

“We’ve never had incidents with the crossings,” he said. “It’s not a concern for us,” he said. “We don’t offer any social assistance programs. (Refugee claimants) usually try to get to Winnipeg, where there are more accommodations.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca