Back road to hope: Migrants flood Canada at remote NY outpost

[TexasTowelie]

CHAMPLAIN, N.Y. - They have come from all over the United States, piling out of taxis, pushing strollers and pulling luggage, to the end of a country road in the north woods.

Where the pavement stops, they pick up small children and lead older ones wearing Mickey Mouse backpacks around a "road closed" sign, threading bushes, crossing a ditch, and filing past another sign in French and English that says "No pedestrians." Then they are arrested.

Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, migrants who came to the U.S. from across the globe — Syria, Congo, Haiti, elsewhere — arrive here where Roxham Road dead-ends so they can walk into Canada, hoping its policies will give them the security they believe the political climate in the United States does not.

"In Trump's country, they want to put us back to our country," said Lena Gunja, a 10-year-old from Congo, who until this week had been living in Portland, Maine. She was traveling with her mother, father and younger sister. "So we don't want that to happen to us, so we want a good life for us. My mother, she wants a good life for us."

Read more: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2017/08/09/back-road-hope-migrants-flood-canada-remote-ny-outpost/553716001/

[riversedge]

1. "But, in a quirk in the application of the law, if migrants arrive in Canada at a location other..

Interesting how word gets around. I wish them well.


.........................Under the 2002 Safe Country Agreement between the United States and Canada, migrants seeking asylum must apply to the first country they arrive in. If they were to go to a legal port of entry, they would be returned to the United States and told to apply there.

But, in a quirk in the application of the law, if migrants arrive in Canada at a location other than a port of entry, such as Roxham Road, they are allowed to request refugee status there.

Many take buses to Plattsburgh, New York, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south. Some fly there, and others take Amtrak. Sometimes taxis carry people right up to the border. Others are let off up the road and have to walk, pulling their luggage behind them.




Dulne Brutus, of Haiti, tows his luggage down Roxham Road in Champlain, N.Y., while heading to an unofficial border station across from Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, Monday, Aug. 7, 2017. Officials on both sides of the border first began to notice last fall, around the time of the U.S. presidential election, that more people were crossing at Roxham Road. Since then the numbers have continued to climb. Charles Krupa, AP
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One Syrian family said they flew into New York City on tourist visas and then went to Plattsburgh, where they took a taxi to the border.

The migrants say they are driven by the perception that the age of Republican President Donald Trump, with his ban on travelers from certain majority-Muslim countries, means the United States is no longer the destination of the world's dispossessed. Taking its place in their minds is the Canada of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a member of his country's Liberal Party.
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[SeattleVet]

2. I was stationed at Plattsburgh from 1973-1977.

At that time the one of the crossings there (I believe it was the Champlain crossing) was manned a certain number of hours a day; the rest of the time there was a small sign asking that you please close the gate after you went through.

We used to regularly travel the 22 miles through the border so we could buy gasoline; it was the time of the big 'gas crisis', and if you didn't have the correct number on your license plate (even or odd) you couldn't buy gas that day. (We allegedly had huge shortages, but 22 miles north there was no shortage at all...and the barges that carried gas on Lake Champlain were routinely turned away from the terminals, unable to unload because all of the storage tanks were full. On a cold morning you could see the frost line showing the levels in the tanks...and they were all completely, or near completely, full. Fun times!)

[Redlineoverdrive]

3. They deployed the military

[link:https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/09/canada-military-asylum-seekers-camp-border|


Seems some people my have been mislead
[link:https://www.google.com/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/haiti-citizens-us-border-canada-whatsapp-hoax-donald-trump-immigration-rules-homeland-security-a7882816.html%3famp|