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Number of US Asylum Seekers Moving to Canada Grows Greatly – Report

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In January 2017, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in a tweet that Canadians will welcome those "fleeing persecution, terror and war" regardless of their faith, and added that "diversity is our strength."

The Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has reported that 2017 saw a six-fold increase in US citizens seeking asylum in Canada over 2016.

An IRCC survey cited 2,550 US citizens who applied for asylum status in Canada last year, the largest such number since at least 1994.

In this context, The Guardian cited experts as saying that "Americans were the third largest contingent of asylum seekers in 2017, after Haitians and Nigerians" and that the overwhelming majority of the US applicants are "children born to Haitian parents."

READ MORE: IOM Helps 10,000 Syrian Refugees from Lebanon, Jordan Resettle in Canada

"Most of the Americans applying for refugee status are the children of non-residents. They are US citizens because they were born there, but they come across the border with their parents because they don't want to be separated," Stephane Handfield, a Montreal-based immigration lawyer, pointed out.

After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's tweet in early 2017 welcoming to Canada "those fleeing persecution, terror and war", the government's stance on asylum seekers changed significantly.

According to Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, now there is no "free ticket" into Canada.

READ MORE: Canada Redeploys Immigration Staff to Process Inflow of Refugees From US

While pundits try to blame the US measles outbreak on immigrants from south of the border, the outbreak that started in Southern California has spread to both Mexico and Canada. - Sputnik International
Canada Warns Refugees Against Heading North as Trump Tightens US Immigration
At the same time, as compared to Washington's "zero-tolerance" policy pledging promising to pursue criminal charges against those who cross the US-Mexico border illegally, Canada is reportedly planning to accept some 310,000 permanent residents this year and signalled its intention to increase that number to 340,000 by 2020.

Last year, the Trump administration announced that it would no longer offer Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for those 59,000 Haitians living in the US after a 2010 earthquake devastated the country.

Trump appointees established deadlines for Haitian TPS beneficiaries to leave the country by July 22, 2019, or face deportation and detention.

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