The latest news out of Boston is that people are starting to really push back against ICE, trying to protect their neighbours at personal cost. ICE agents also keep operating without identifying themselves, without warrants, and they have started detaining and even deporting US citizens. In the US, where there are more guns than there are people. This is a powderkeg, waiting to blow.
And I have no confidence that their government is going to try to deescalate things. If we allow ourselves to dabble into conspiracy thinking and ascribe to malice what can just as well be ascribed to stupidity, we can just as well say there is a deliberate strategy by the US government to provoke violence. Trump signed that Executive Order to allow the use of military and national security assets to be used for policing. The Project 2025 guy has famously said that «the revolution will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”». And with Trump fucking up their economy, he will need to refocus to some internal enemy, to also clamp down on the inevitable economic discontent.
Aaaand to top it all up, historically, things heat up as temperatures heat up. It’s coming, folks. Am I paranoid here? I don’t think I am.
How is this going to impact us? Are we going to have a surge of political asylum claimants and/or refugees from the States? The first ones have already started trickling in.
And what the hell are we doing to prepare for this? In the short term, this is going to put stress on social services, housing, employment, healthcare, etc. In the medium term, we could be seeing anti-refugee backlash (e.g., an influx of a bunch of angloamericans in QC might re-ignite language tensions) and political tension with the US demanding deportations of asylum claimant dissidents (some of whom might have violent charges against them, e.g., for fighting back against ICE).
I feel like the guy from the meme a bit. But, guys! Guys! WTF.
Fair.
But let’s keep in mind that the non-humanitarian avenues can be restricted. See this from last year, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68621013 when Canada had announced that they would limit the number of temporary work permits granted. It seems like this idea was revived again this year, https://theworldbridge.ca/canada-introduces-first-ever-cap-on-temporary-residents/
From the later link there are 2.5 million temporary residents in Canada, from all over the entire world. Meanwhile, from https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-affiliation/ there are over 45 million folks registered to the Democratic party in the US. It’s easy to see how the spots to move to Canada (legally) fill up pretty quick in this situation if things get bad enough.
So I think we’re on the same page here. Those early birds with enough privilege can use alternate pathways to come to Canada, but even latecomers with the same level of privilege may find a more difficult situation to contend with.
As far as I can tell they’re still in Canada, still in limbo. The process of claiming asylum is a slow one, and they’ve only been here a couple of months. So … they haven’t been approved yet, but neither have they been told to pack their bags and leave.
Agreed. Likely it’s time has come and gone.
But if one really thinks about it, one can see that the STCA was meant to be for Canada’s benefit originally, as there was almost nothing going the other way pre-drumpf (and post-drumpf it’s probably zero). So even historically speaking, it was always about keeping refugees in the USA out of Canada…