Canada has a “limited capacity” to welcome people looking to resettle, the federal immigration minister said, as the country braces for a potential influx of migrants in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s border crackdown.
As part of a series of executive orders cracking down on immigration, this week Trump suspended America’s refugee resettlement program, leaving stranded thousands in war-torn countries across the globe who were approved to come to the United States.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the U.S. decision is “unfortunate” and Canada will continue to be there for people fleeing conflict, but there is a limit to how many it can support.
“Canada will continue to remain a humanitarian country. We have limited ability to welcome people in a proper way,” he told reporters before a Liberal caucus meeting in Ottawa Friday.
Miller said Canada has already taken in more than 50,000 Afghans who fled the Taliban takeover in 2021 and is currently housing more than 300,000 Ukrainians as the Russian invasion goes on. In addition, Canada has also welcomed tens of thousands of Syrian refugees over the years, he said.
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“So, there is limited capacity, but if there are opportunities, we’ll certainly look at them,” Miller said.
“We will continue to do our job as a country that does have a heart and does care about resettlement of people that are fleeing war.”
The suspension of the refugee settlement program was in an executive order signed by Trump on Monday. It left open the possibility that people who had undergone the lengthy process to be approved as refugees and permitted to come to the U.S., and had flights booked before the Jan. 27 deadline, might still be able to get in under the wire.
But in an email reviewed Wednesday by The Associated Press, the U.S. agency overseeing refugee processing and arrival told staff and stakeholders that “refugee arrival to the United States have been suspended until further notice.”
Trump’s order had given the agency until Jan. 27 before it began to halt all processing and travelling for at least three months. Now, however, it appears the timing in the order has been moved up.
An estimated 15,000 Afghans are waiting in Pakistan to be approved for resettlement in the U.S. via an American government program. It was set up to help Afghans at risk under the Taliban because of their work with the U.S. government, media, aid agencies and rights groups after U.S. troops pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, when the Taliban took power.
— with files from The Associated Press
