The United States and Canada have agreed on new rules for migrants to ease the situation at the common border. The "New York Times" reported on Thursday, citing a senior American official. Accordingly, the agreement is to be announced on Friday after a meeting of US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa. The extension of the current migration agreement should allow Canada and the USA to limit the number of migrants arriving in the respective countries.

Sofia Dreisbach

North American political correspondent based in Washington.

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According to the report, Canada will be allowed to turn away migrants at the busy, unofficial border crossing "Roxham Road" between the state of New York and the province of Québec. According to the 2004 migration agreement, people must also apply for asylum in the country where they arrived. However, a loophole for entry into Canada has so far been unofficial border crossings: migrants who reached Canada via the "Roxham Road", for example, were usually only briefly detained and could then apply for asylum.

In return for this agreement, Canada is expected to launch a new program for 15,000 migrants from South and Central America fleeing violence, persecution or economic hardship, according to the report. This is intended to reduce the number of illegal entries into the United States. The concern in Washington is mainly about the US-Mexican border in the south, where more than 2.3 million people tried to reach America last year. But even at the northern border, the number of migrants is rising in both directions.

U.S. Border Agency Flies Migrants to Texas

For example, migrants from the United States hope to get asylum in Canada more quickly; conversely, Mexicans who enter Canada on a visitor visa in particular rely on not being turned away at the far less frequented northern border of the USA. For asylum seekers arriving by plane or ship, the agreement does not apply, according to the New York Times.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the U.S. border agency had flown migrants who entered illegally from Canada to Texas as part of a deterrence campaign. In March, it is said to have been about a hundred people who were brought on two charter flights as Plattsburgh in the state of New York to Harlingen and El Paso in Texas. This was "the consequence of the illegal border crossing," Reuters quoted an anonymous border official as saying.

NBC reported that, according to the border authority, the relocations served to "relieve the facilities and make better use of resources and personnel." It is not known whether the said migrants were deported to Mexico under the pandemic-related "Title 42" regulation. This allows border authorities to turn away migrants on the grounds of public health and expires on May 11 after about three years.

Last year, according to the U.S. Border Patrol, a good 100,000 migrants wanted to enter the U.S. from Canada, three times as many as in 2021. Canadian authorities say the number of attempted illegal border crossings from the U.S. has more than doubled since 2019; instead of about 16,000, there were almost 40,000 cases last year.

President Biden arrived in Canada on Thursday for a visit. A bilateral meeting with Trudeau and an address to the Canadian Parliament are scheduled for Friday. Due to criticism of both the government in Washington and Ottawa, both countries had previously assured that it would also be about dealing with the increasing number of migrants at the border. The United States had long refused to negotiate the border agreement.