U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an immigration deal Friday to stop asylum-seekers from crossing the U.S.-Canada border at unofficial crossings.
The United States and Canada are working to "address
historic levels of migration in our hemisphere," Biden told reporters at a
joint news conference Friday in Ottawa during his first visit to Canada as
president.
The migration agreement allows each country to turn away
asylum-seekers who reach the border at unofficial crossings and is aimed at
helping Canada limit the rising number of asylum-seekers who have crossed into
the country from the United States after entering the U.S. elsewhere.
Under the previous migration pact, U.S. and Canadian
officials were able to turn back asylum-seekers in both directions at formal
points of entry, but this did not apply to unofficial crossings. Canada had
been pressing the United States to expand the deal, called the Safe Third
Country Agreement, to include unofficial crossings.
Trudeau has faced growing pressure to stem the rising number
of asylum-seekers coming to Canada, many of them traveling on Roxham Road, a
dirt path between New York State and Quebec.
Nearly 40,000 asylum-seekers crossed into Canada from the
United States in 2022, the highest number since Canada began tracking such
crossings in 2017.
Trudeau said the agreement would go into effect after
midnight Saturday. The quick implementation is aimed at avoiding a surge of
migrants trying to cross the border before the change takes effect.
As part of the deal, Canada has agreed to create a pathway
for 15,000 refugees from Latin America to enter the country, to try to ease
pressure on the U.S. southern border.
"We continue to be open to regular migrants. And we
will increase the number of asylum-seekers we accept from the Western
Hemisphere in order to compensate for closing these irregular crossings,"
Trudeau said.
Critics of the migration deal say asylum-seekers will still
attempt to cross the border undetected but will now do so in more dangerous
ways.
In addition to immigration, Biden and Trudeau discussed a
range of issues Friday, including the war in Ukraine, efforts to counter Russia
and China, and a worsening security situation in Haiti.
Trudeau announced Canada would invest an additional $100
million in Haiti to support the country's national police amid increasing gang
violence in the country.
Biden said "gangs have essentially taken the place of
the government" in Haiti.
He said that the idea of deploying an international force to
Haiti was "not in play at the moment" but that it had not been taken
off the table.
"We also are looking at whether or not the
international community through the United Nations could play a larger
role," Biden said.
On the economic front, Trudeau said Canada had signed an
agreement with IBM to expand research and development to build semiconductors
to counter China's growing economic power.
"With growing competition, including from an
increasingly assertive China, there's no doubt why it matters that we turn to
each other now, to build up a North American market, on everything from
semiconductors to solar panel batteries," Trudeau said in a speech to the
Canadian Parliament earlier in the day.
Also addressing the parliament Friday, Biden hailed the relationship
between the two countries, saying Canadians and Americans are "two people
… sharing one heart."
In his nearly 40-minute speech, Biden said "no two
nations on Earth are bound by such close ties, friendship, family, commerce and
culture." He was warmly welcomed by Canada's Parliament, which gave the
U.S. president loud cheers and a standing ovation.
Biden and his wife, Jill, traveled to Canada on Thursday and
met Trudeau and his family at their Ottawa home.
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