The Globe and Mail

Mexico’s President wants something from us. He wants his citizens to get a smoother ride through our thick, troublesome border.

Felipe Calderon’s trip to Canada this week will unavoidably focus on an issue that has annoyed his government for a year: requiring Mexicans to get visitors’ visas before travelling to Canada.

The Harper government will reassure him that soon, in a year or two, those visas won’t be needed. By then, they say, Canada will have reformed its refugee system, so Ottawa won’t have to worry about a flood of Mexican asylum-seekers. It’s a promise they might not be able to keep.

Mr. Calderon will be lobbying Ottawa to declare Mexico “safe” under the proposed new refugee law. That way, most Mexican asylum-seekers would be quickly sent home, so the visas wouldn’t be needed.

Mexicans are sensitive to issues of cross-border mobility. Their U.S. neighbour expends huge, high-profile efforts to keep out illegal immigrants. Canada’s more open border made us, to Mexican eyes, the more reasonable partner in the North American free-trade agreement. Not so any more.

Ottawa now requires Mexicans to jump through bureaucratic hoops to come to Canada. The time-consuming visa forms ask for childhood addresses and bank account details. Mexicans think the process is a deliberate effort to discourage them from coming. They’re right.

The visas were a response to a spike in the number of Mexican visitors who claimed asylum in Canada. The number jumped from 2,550 in 2005 to 9,309 last year. More claimants came from Mexico than any other country, but only about 10 per cent were accepted as legitimate.

So Canada imposed visa restrictions last July in a move that many Mexicans took as an insult. It produced results: Mexican refugee claims fell by more than 80 per cent in the past year. But Canada’s burgeoning business in bus tours for Mexicans has been clobbered, too. Mr. Calderon will make that point by meeting Canadian tour operators in Toronto on Thursday.

Stephen Harper blamed Canada’s policies for the mess. If our refugee laws weren’t so lax, he told Mr. Calderon at a meeting in Mexico last August, we wouldn’t need to use onerous visas to keep Mexicans out. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney argued “bogus” refugee claimants are drawn to Canada because they stay for years before being deported.

Now a new bill before the Commons aims to speed up decisions, so that rejected claimants are deported within months and false claimants will be discouraged from applying. Once it’s passed, and fully in place after about a year, Canada hopes to lift the visa restrictions on Mexico.

“That is our objective, and that’s the reason for the law,” Peter Kent, the junior foreign minister for the Americas, said Wednesday. “And that’s the assurance that the Prime Minister, and [Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence] Cannon and I have regularly conveyed to the government of Mexico.”

That’s the theory. In practice, Ottawa’s only going to lift the visa restrictions if it won’t face a new flood of Mexican asylum-seekers.

The bill now before the Commons would give different treatment to asylum-seekers depending on where they come from. If their home country is declared safe, then the asylum-seeker won’t get as many appeals, and could be deported in a few months. Mr. Calderon is lobbying for Mexico to be called safe to ensure Canada’s border would open to Mexican travellers.

But it’s one thing to declare the U.S. safe, or Hungary – only one per cent of its claimants are accepted by the IRB. But one in 10 Mexican refugee claims is accepted by the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Mexico’s government is not widely blamed for persecution, but rampant organized crime has infiltrated elements of its police and army, and competing drug cartels control areas like Ciudad Juarez.

“Mexico’s record on protection is really, really mixed,” said Amnesty International Canada’s Gloria Nafziger. Rights advocates don’t like the idea of countries being declared safe. Many point to Mexico as the prime example of a country that should not be included on the safe list.

The NDP and Bloc Québécois are against the refugee-reform bill. The Conservatives are trying to make a deal with the Liberals to pass it within weeks. To get it, the government is willing to offer restrictions on the types of countries that the government will be allowed to declare “safe” – and those rules may rule out Mexico. Mr. Calderon’s lobby may take years.

Campbell Clark writes on foreign affairs in Ottawa