Canada Braces for Hike in Mexico Refugees amid Visa Lift, Trump

The Canadian government is preparing for a surge in Mexican asylum seekers as the country’s decision to lift the visa requirement for their country came into effect Thursday and as many brace for a major crackdown on immigration in the U.S. by president-elect Donald Trump.

RELATED:
Trump Vows to Deport up to 3 Million Undocumented Migrants Immediately

Sources at the immigration authority in Canada told local broadcaster CBC News that “high-level meetings took place this week with officials at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and in other departments,” the report said.

The decision by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a reversal of his predecessor’s 2009 restriction on Mexican nationals entering the country as a result of what the previous conservative called "fake" refugee claims.

The Canadian outlet said officials have been conducting talks on plans to deal with the possible spike since June, when the decision on the visa waiver was announced. However, these talks were “accelerated this week after Trump's surprise win,” the report claimed.

Trudeau’s government agreed to lift the visa requirement in exchange for Mexico increasing its imports of Canadian beef. “This move will make it easier for our Mexican friends to visit Canada, while growing our local economies and strengthening our communities,” Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, said at the time.

Trump has promised to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and deport more than three million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. within the first 100 days of his presidency.

RELATED:​
Death in Detention: 1 Week, 2 Dead in Canadian Immigration Jail

While the government downplayed the possible spike in asylum-seeker applications from Mexico, Toronto-based immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman argued that Trump’s election would significantly increase the refugee claims.

"The government was very concerned about the potential for a large number of new claims coming from Mexico, and that's why they hesitated for so long before announcing that they were going to remove the visa," Waldman told CBC news Thursday.

"And that announcement was made before anyone knew that Donald Trump, with his very different immigration policies from those of the current administration, won the election."

During his presidential campaign, Trump put undocumented Mexicans at the center of his attacks when he claimed that most of the undocumented immigrants from the country were “rapists, drug-dealers and criminals."

When the visa restriction was introduced in 2009, refugee claims from Mexico peaked at more than 9,000, while only 11 percent of those were approved. In 2015 only 120 Mexicans applied for asylum in Canada, according to government figures.

Waldman said the exact hike in asylum applications will depend on how Trump will follow through on his promises.