A group of Republican lawmakers left out all sorts of details earlier this week when they held a news conference in Washington to sound the alarm about a surge in migration from Canada.
They put some big numbers on a poster and included those same bulging figures on a handout distributed to journalists.
They noted, correctly, that irregular border-crossings from Canada are up.
Here’s what went unsaid: The sum they were touting was a kitchen-sink statistical catch-all, a throw-everything-in-there mish-mash of federal data.
Meaning that the number of irregular crossings is so small, representing such a minuscule fraction of the total they touted, it’s the equivalent to a statistical blip.
Republican lawmakers, including Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, centre, held a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to warn about a surge in migration from Canada. (Alexander Panetta/CBC)
The issue involves what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security calls “encounters” — and it covers a vast array of incidents at the U.S. border.
Such incidents range from the innocuous to the serious: from someone forgetting their passport or lacking proof of a COVID-19 vaccination, to missing a work visa, to being refused entry over a criminal record, to someone trying to sneak across.
Those figures, then, can frustrate migration-policy analysts. They argue the catch-all number winds up being used to confuse people more than enlighten them.
“The numbers require explanation and contextualization,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. “Looking at encounter statistics, it requires getting into the details.”
The Republicans did not, by any means, sweat the details.
Take the fact sheet they handed out: It cited a 1,498 per cent increase in land-border encounters since U.S. President Joe Biden took office. Never mind that, in January 2021, land travel was severely restricted under pandemic rules.
The grand total: 2.7 per cent
So what are the numbers at the U.S.’s northern border?
The data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show about 165,000 encounters along the northern U.S. border since the start of 2022.
That’s the stat Republican lawmakers showed.
Then if you filter that data for people being stopped between official ports of entry, here’s what you’ll find: 2.7 per cent.
Ninety-seven per cent are people stopped at normal border crossings by CBP’s Office of Field Operations.
To their credit, the Republicans listed the more precise, smaller numbers in a letter last week to the U.S. Homeland Security secretary, demanding details of his plan for the northern border.
The detailed data shows about 4,500 people being stopped from migrating into the U.S. from Canada, between normal checkpoints, since the start of the 2022 fiscal year.
Which, as the Republicans correctly identified, is an increase: If the current rate held, the 2023 number could end up being triple the number last year’s, according to U.S. data.
Yet even that comes with an asterisk.
Ignoring the pandemic effect
The chart on the Republican poster starts in 2020, so it doesn’t show the pre-pandemic level in fiscal year 2019.
Using that year as a baseline instead, there’s a less dramatic trend: a 35 per cent bump over 2019, not the 300 per cent when compared to last year.
Digging down even deeper, some of that 35 per cent is due to pandemic rules: Back in 2019, travellers weren’t being turned back at the U.S. border for lacking vaccine papers.
Republicans released this fact sheet showing eye-popping migration trends from Canada. It omits details. It conflates routine incidents with serious ones. It compares current land-border trends with January 2021, when there were severe travel restrictions linked to the pandemic. (Alexander Panetta/CBC)
Some Republican lawmakers demanded more personnel at the Canadian border, saying they wanted more agents hired in their districts.
They decried the staffing disparity: the Mexican border has about 20 times the total number of U.S. border patrol agents as the northern border.
That is consistent with migration enforcement stats.
Comparison with Mexican border: there is none
The southern border with Mexico, since the start of the 2022 fiscal year, has produced about 20 times more encounters than the northern border with Canada.
But the disparity in migration runs even deeper than the fact that the Mexican border has seen 3.25 million of those so-called encounters, to Canada’s 165,000.
The differences in the detailed data are more pronounced.
Again, a minute percentage of so-called encounters recorded at the Canadian border occurred between border checkpoints, 2.7 per cent.
It’s the opposite along Mexico’s border, where 91 per cent of so-called encounters involved Border Patrol agents, who enforce between checkpoints.
Republicans take aim at human trafficking across Canada-U.S. border
A group of U.S. Republicans are banding together to call attention to what they say is a surge in human trafficking from Canada into the U.S., forming what they’re calling a Northern Border Security Caucus.
Despite all these differences, another U.S. immigration expert said the recent trend with Canada is worth paying attention to.
For starters, she said, there’s the question of migrant safety. It’s undeniable that more are crossing, even in the harsh winter months. A family of four from India, for example, froze to death trying to cross from Canada last year.
“Due to the danger of winter crossings, [it’s] still a concern,” said Theresa Brown, an immigration analyst at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center.
The trend also raises questions for U.S. policymakers, she said.
One involves the potential impact on already-strained U.S. immigration systems, with the courts that process such claims facing mounting backlogs and years-long delays.
Analyst: Still worth examining this trend
Brown further said this recent trendline at the Canadian border could indicate an emerging pattern in migration: people using Canada to get to the U.S.
For example, Mexican citizens don’t need a visa to travel to Canada; they do need one for the U.S. And more than 2,100 Mexicans have been stopped by U.S. Border Patrol between regular northern border checkpoints since the start of 2022.
American officials, Brown said, will want to know what’s driving this – whether it’s new enforcement at the southern border or other phenomena.
The bottom line on this issue?
The increase is real. The numbers are tiny. And politicians, sometimes, cherry-pick from that great big tree of data.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
