Canada _ (Commonwealth Union) _ It began with 87 rooms last summer, increased to 300, and most recently increased to roughly 2,000 hotel rooms in Niagara Falls, Ontario, to house asylum applicants brought there from Quebec. Also, the city’s community services are under strain to satisfy the demands of this unexpected flood of individuals due to the approximately 3,000 migrants who have been transported in total since July.
“We’re doing what we normally do, which is giving a hand, in an effort to be decent Canadians. Yet, there are restrictions on what we can achieve physically “Jim Diodati, mayor of Niagara Falls, remarked.
Over 5,500 migrants have been bused to border cities in Ontario, including Niagara Falls, Windsor, and Cornwall, as tensions have been building in Quebec over the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have entered Canada on foot via the unauthorized Roxham Road crossing.
Niagara Falls is pondering what comes next given its constrained resources and the impending tourist season. As Quebec’s shelter system and hotels IRCC rented met capacity, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada claims it started relocating refugees arriving in Quebec to Ontario in July of last year.
There is no official breakdown of where all of the migrants are coming from, but among other places, home nations for many of the migrants are Haiti and Colombia, where people speak French, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.
According to the IRCC, asylum seekers in Niagara Falls were staying in 951 hotel rooms as of February 19, 2023, dropping off from the peak. Even still, it’s uncertain when that number would increase once more and what effects it might have on the neighborhood and its services, especially given that some of the hotels are located right in the center of the tourist area.
Sean Fraser, the immigration minister, has heard Diodati’s concerns regarding the approaching tourist season. At Niagara Falls, 40,000 people rely on tourism to support their families and pay their rent and mortgages, he added. Despite the fact that the government is paying the hotels to lodge the asylum seekers, visitors who would typically be paying for those rooms also dine at the restaurants and visit the attractions.
