TORONTO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th March, 2020) Asylum seekers irregularly entering Canada will be taken into custody and screened for novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and quarantined, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said at a briefing on Tuesday.
"We've had a number of inquiries about individuals who cross our borders irregularly seeking refugee status... because of the need for the 14-day self-isolation, we are now making separate arrangements for those individuals to be placed in appropriate shelter in order to accommodate the requirement for the period of isolation," Blair said.
In addition to regular processing procedures, asylum seekers will now be screened for coronavirus-like symptoms and be questioned about their travel history, Blair told reporters.
In recent days, questions have mounted about asylum seekers irregularly crossing the Canadian border from the United States, despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issuing a temporary entry halt for all foreigners, except US citizens and several other categories of visitors. Per the new guidelines, only asymptomatic Canadians will be allowed to board planes incoming into Canada.
According to government data, 54,739 individuals have irregularly crossed the Canada-United States border between February 2017 and December 2019.
Asylum seekers have exploited a loophole in the "Safe Third Country" border agreement between the US and Canada, which allows asylum seekers to enter Canada outside official ports of entry and to make a refugee claim on Canadian soil. The legal gap created a number of irregular entry hotspots, including the infamous Roxham Road "crossing" between the US state of New York and Canada's Quebec.
According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the number of confirmed novel coronavirus infections exceeds 189,000 and more than 7,500 people have died from the disease.
