BC asks Ottawa for money to help local shelters preparing for potential surge undocumented migrants of the United States.
“We are seeing an increase in undocumented people crossing the border into the United States into our shelters because of the new Trump (Donald) regime,” Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon told Global News.
“I’m certainly concerned because the rhetoric we hear from the federal government has been closed on undocumented people, that will lead to people crossing the border to come to Canada. We have seen it historically.
“But we are already starting to see the numbers increase. And at the end of the day, they are human beings who need support. »
The House on Wednesday gave final approval to a bill that requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes, marking the first legislation Trump can sign as Congress, with bipartisan support, quickly complied with his plans to reprimand over illegal immigration.
“The federal government has a very important role,” Kahlon added. “In fact, this is the space that the federal government needs to be in and I would say they need to do a little bit more to make sure that communities have support.
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“We’ve seen dollars recently going to Ontario, dollars going to Quebec, we haven’t seen that same number of dollars coming to British Columbia.”
Vancouver City Councilor Mike Klassen told Global News he spoke at the 2024 BC Union Municipalities Conference about the increase in asylum seekers coming to the Lower Mainland and this was before Trump’s recent re-election.
“It was a few years ago when I was visiting some of our shelters and asking them how things were going, and then that’s when they learned that they were being overwhelmed by refugees who were coming directly through ports or through the airport and coming into our shelter system and overwhelming them,” he said.
Klassen said there needs to be a coordinated response between the federal and state levels of government to work with cities and nonprofits now that Trump is president again.
“We are really overwhelmed in our cities,” he added.
“Our shelters are full. Up to 50% of people in some of the shelters surveyed in the city of Vancouver are currently refugees. So that’s a huge number. And that’s a real wake-up call for us to try to do something. »
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