CNN has picked up on an interesting trend which hasn’t gotten too much ink thus far. While most of the national attention regarding border encounters and asylum claims is focused on Tijuana at the moment, there’s another border where petitions for asylum are on the rise. That would be our border with Canada where a record number of American citizens and “residents” have been showing up at the doorstep of our neighbor to the north and seeking asylum. The numbers for 2017 showed a massive increase and, while somewhat lower, there’s still plenty of them this year as well. (CNN)

The number of US citizens seeking refuge in Canada skyrocketed last year.

Exactly 2,550 Americans applied for asylum in Canada in 2017, according to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. That’s more than a sixfold increase from the 395 Americans who applied in 2016.

It’s believed that the hard-line immigration policies of President Donald Trump have fueled the increase in the number of Americans fleeing to Canada.

The United States supplied the third-highest number of asylum-seekers to Canada in 2017, topped by Haiti (7,785 applicants) at No. 1 and Nigeria (6,005 applicants) at No. 2.

The way CNN is phrasing the description of the people seeking asylum is rather deceptive (surprise) and you have to sort through that article a bit to get the full picture. Your first question might be, why would citizens of the United States be seeking asylum in Canada? That was the first thought that came to my mind as well, and I immediately assumed it must have been all those celebrities who threatened to move there if Donald Trump was elected. Sadly, that’s not the case at all.

Between 80 and 85 percent of all the asylum seekers are of Haitian descent. The actual “citizens” heading for Canada are almost entirely minor children born in the United States to Haitian parents who are either in the country illegally or here with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) which they fear will be revoked under President Trump. So when CNN talks about a record number of “U.S. citizens seeking refuge in Canada” they are talking about those children, and the quote about “Americans” applying for asylum includes quite a few who aren’t Americans at all.

What we’re really talking about is the “self-deportation” that Mitt Romney spoke of back in 2012. If Canada really wants to grant them asylum and take them in, this isn’t a situation that calls for panic or action. They’re actually just saving us some time and money.