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Refugees Seeking Asylum in the US Escaping to Canada at Rising Rates

CC0 / / Refugees crisis
Refugees crisis - Sputnik International
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To date, at least 15,000 people have illegally crossed the US-Canadian border in 2017 asking for refugee status in Canada while claiming that they are living in fear of being deported back to their home country by US President Donald Trump's administration.

The number of immigrants crossing the Quebec/New York area border is so high that elements of the Canadian military have established a tent encampment in Quebec, a move that has been highly criticized by anti-immigrant groups in the northern country, Global News reported. 

People listen as US President Barack Obama speaks during a panel discussion during the 2015 White House Tribal Nations Conference at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC, November 5, 2015. - Sputnik International
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Refugee tribunals, Canadian government agencies responsible for evaluating asylum requests, have become increasingly sympathetic toward people fleeing the US following Trump's ascendancy to the US presidency.

According to Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board figures, 408 out of the 592 asylum claims of those who illegally crossed the border between March and September were approved. The 69-percent acceptance rate is higher than any other method people used to gain entrance to the nation since 2016.

A tribunal member, overseeing an asylum case involving a Syrian refugee and her daughter, cited the asylum-seekers' reasons for leaving the US as reasonable, saying, "Certainly, that seems to be playing out as you have feared, and today on the news I know that President Trump has suspended the Syrian refugee program."

"You have provided, in my view, a reasonable explanation of your failure to claim in the US," the tribunal member stated, cited by Global News.

Other claims that have been successfully used to gain refugee status in Canada according to Reuters involve a May 2017 decision in which an Iraqi woman's detention in a US airport and several documented racist incidents experienced by her at school were seen to be credible reasons to be accepted into the country.

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