Editorial cartoon by Brian Gable.The Globe and Mail
It is understandable that Mexican and Czech officials would be disappointed, even angry, over the reimposition of visa requirements by Canada on nationals of those two friendly countries. Visas would not be needed if Canada could get its own refugee house in order, and this is not the fault of either Mexico or the Czech Republic. The fact remains, however, that those two democratic countries account for an unreasonably large number of refugee claimants in Canada, burdening a generous system with often spurious claims. The federal government needed to act.
In the first quarter of 2009, about 25 per cent of refugee claims involved Mexicans. Only a small fraction of these Mexicans, about 11 per cent, are ultimately accepted as refugees, but by the time even overtly false claims are finally dealt with, years can have passed, and federal officials will have had to cross numerous hurdles in order to successfully remove many of them. This taxes a system designed to provide asylum to the world's truly persecuted. The government is right not to allow it to be hijacked by economic migrants.
In the case of the Czech Republic, the numbers are skyrocketing, with only slightly fewer refugee claims filed in the first quarter of 2009, as in all of 2008. Is there some humanitarian disaster unfolding in the midst of the European Union? And if so, how is it that reporters, to say nothing of the vast bureaucracy based in Brussels - so much closer to the Czech Republic than Canada - have failed to notice? The fact is that Czech citizens, including the Roma who are making many, if not most, of these claims, enjoy some of the best human-rights protections on Earth. The Czech Republic complies with EU human-rights guarantees. There is doubtless discrimination against the Roma in that country, and such problems should concern Prague and Brussels. But is this really where scarce Canadian resources should be expended, particularly in a world where true humanitarian crises are all too common?
Mirek Topolanek, then the Czech prime minister, complained in May that Canada's refugee system was too "soft," and Czech officials say no other nation is attending to so many claims from their country. In fact, Canadian adjudication of refugee claims is quite good, but the federal government needs to devise means - and find the resolve - to deport unsuccessful claimants.