An immigration oddity caught my eye. Quebec has a growing immigration problem. As Quebec is in Canada, at least until the separatists have their way, the scale of the problem is not like ours. In 2022 a record of 2.76 million migrants came across the US border, mostly the border with Mexico. The number of illegal immigrants who entered Quebec in 2020 was 40,000 but that was double the 2019 number. When ‘doubling’ happens in immigration numbers, you have a problem no matter how large your neighbor’s numbers are.
The thing is nearly all of them are entering through the weirdness at Roxham Road. CNN reports, “The unofficial Roxham Road border crossing” has been made “infamous by a quirk of diplomacy and street-planning that allows someone to drive to the border and walk into Canada unlawfully, rather than be turned away.” The road dead-ends at the border, then picks up on the other side after a break, ergo there is no border guard post as there would be if the road went through without that break. Because the immigrants have migrated into Canada proper, they must be processed rather than sent back.
I was born about five miles north of Canada in a hospital on Woodward Avenue in Detroit’s Cultural Center. (In order for me to come back to Earth again I negotiated some concessions before hand, like this Cultural Center business.) Jumping across the border is a regular thing between Windsor and Detroit, but when I grew my hair long and drove a VW bus it was a different story. Oh, getting into Canada was no problem. They welcomed me in, it was getting back to the United States that was the problem. On one quick trip over to Windsor to pick up a tin of loose tobacco, yes in those days I smoked tobacco, I was patted down and my bus was taken apart by my fellow US citizens.
So it does not surprise me that Canada has a loophole in their immigration defense. It’s not the only one, but more about that later. CNN says their is a “seemingly endless flow of migrants” through the Roxham Road quirk since 2017. But the number has rocked around significantly since the 2020 high. CNN reports, “The Canadian government documented a record 3,901 unauthorized migrant entries into Quebec in 2022, nearly all at Roxham Road.” But in January of this year “which is the latest month on record, 4,875 asylum-seekers crossed unlawfully—more than double the number from the same time last year.”
The weird thing about these immigrants is that they have to first enter the US illegally then make their way up to upstate New York to eventually walk into Canada, where they are arrested and processed, but with Canadian style and grace, words that do not fit any description of US border guards.
The Week, a magazine that appears irregularly in my mail box, alerted me to this anomaly. They write, “Many of them traveled first to the US so they could enter Canada at the unofficial border crossing at Quebec’s Roxham Road, across from Champlain, NY.”
Recognizing the problem, Canadian officials act in a complete opposite of what US officials do. Instead of locking them up in order to send them back, Canada welcomes immigrants and tries to make things better for them. Canadian “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he will seek to renegotiate the 2004 treaty with the US that lets undocumented migrants who get in through unofficial crossings stay in Canada and apply for asylum,” according to The Week.
Hmmm, Canada. You are so-o-o-o un-American.
There’s another quirk on the Canadian border which apparently the immigrant underground hasn’t learned about yet. So if you are one or know some, you might hip them to this.
The fact is Walpole Island, one of the places where the Ojibway stopped and stayed in their long migration from the Atlantic seaboard to the Great Lakes circa 900 AD or so, is and always was Indian Country.
It is across from Harsen’s Island which is a US island across the St. Clair River from Algonac, Michigan. In fact, my Uncle Nick and Aunt Ethyl had their summer house on Harsen’s Island directly across the international channel from Walpole Island. Therefore, I knew a good bit about Walpole Island. I knew it was an Ojibway/Ottawa reservation and even stood side by side in a gang fight with an Indian from there. We drove off the bad boys from East Detroit, btw.
What I didn’t know in those days was that Walpole Island is not part of Canada, neither is it part of the United States. It is officially called ‘unceded territory’ which I read as never having been given up by the Indians in any treaty, Canada or United States. If I were an immigrant wanting to get to Canada to begin my new life, I’d think about hoping over to Walpole Island. The paperwork alone would make a seasoned bureaucrat cry.
By the way and for what it’s worth, Wikipedia informs me, “Walpole Island is known as the resting place of Tecumseh, prominent 19th-century leader of the Native America tribe known as the Shawnee.” Couple of problems with this. First of all, Tecumseh was a Shawnee, and he was a chief (also a British Brigadier General) but he was not a Shawnee chief. He had his own tribe.
Secondly, when he was killed at the Battle of the Thames, his body was never recovered by the Kentuckians who did the dirty deed. The reason is Tecumseh dressed down so there was no sign of authority in his garments. It wouldn’t surprise me if the surviving Indians would have gathered up the body of their beloved leader and shuttled it off to the safest place they could think of, their own land, Walpole Island.
P.S. I wonder if Buffy Saint-Marie knew about Roxham Road when she wrote “Welcome Emigrante”?
PPS Today at 4 pm EDT The Old Hippie Show on Earlham College radio WECI. Listen live here! Hint: You can call in requests from anywhere in the UltraVerse, but not from the OtherVerse, which has yet to be written. If you’re kind, Uncle Pat will tell you the request line number.
On a personal note, Uncle Pat is creating a, to me, new genre: Old Hippie Music which is alive with new music as he proves every Monday from 4-7 pm.
French Acadians become Cajuns
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