FIRST READING: How claiming to be a refugee became a get-out-of-jail-free card

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

TOP STORY

An entire accused crime ring claiming refugee status all at once has exposed just how comfortable foreign suspects have become with abusing Canada’s asylum system.

This month, B.C.’s newly minted Extortion Task Force was zeroing in on 14 foreign nationals accused of participating in an extortion crime wave currently terrorizing the Lower Mainland.

Starting in earnest in 2023, organized gangs have been roving through Surrey and Abbotsford demanding large sums of cash from South Asian businesses, and then attacking non-payers with arson or gunfire.

More than 130 such incidents have occurred just in 2025, yielding a weekly tally of shootings and vehicle fires. This rash of violence is one of the main reasons that Ottawa declared India’s Bishnoi Gang a terrorist entity in September, accusing them of generating terror among Canadian diaspora communities “through extortion and intimidation.”

But according to an exclusive report by Stewart Bell at Global News, just as the Canada Border Services Agency began investigating 14 alleged extortionists, all of them claimed to be refugees, instantly stopping the investigation in its tracks.

In a Thursday statement, Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke called out how the “international thugs and criminals” abused the asylum system in order to “extend their stay in Canada.”

“Guests in our country who break our laws need to be sent home,” she said.

The case of the Surrey 14 is one of the more brazen abuses of the refugee system to date. But it’s nothing new that a foreign national would claim refugee status to evade deportation. Or that asylum status would be used as a tool of foreign criminal gangs.

Because, as the Surrey case illustrates, it works.

If the accused are indeed extortionists, they’re likely to eventually face some kind of removal order or criminal prosecution. But by merely telling border authorities “I am seeking asylum,” they’ve potentially obtained up to two additional years on Canadian soil.

As of the most recent estimates of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, there is a backlog of at least 24 months until refugee claimants can have their case put before an immigration officer.

As such, any foreign national claiming to be a refugee can be assured of at least two years of living in Canada under the status of an asylum claimant.

The status not only clears the asylum claimant to obtain a work permit, but it also makes them eligible for free health care via the Interim Federal Health Program. The official landing page for the program includes a large green button reading “how to get health care.”

In some cases, asylum claimants are also eligible for free housing. Since 2017, the federal government has spent more than $1.5 billion on the Interim Housing Assistance Program, which places asylum claimants into free hotel rooms.

And there’s no immediate reason these various benefits wouldn’t apply to the 14 accused in Surrey. While suspected criminality is a reason an asylum claimant might ultimately be rejected, the current backlog means that the alleged Surrey extortionists won’t even have their claim reviewed until at least 2028.

A former mayor of Surrey, Doug McCallum, was particularly blunt in a Thursday critique of the current state of the asylum system.

In a statement for his group Safe Surrey Coalition, McCallum wrote “their fake claims turn our immigration system into a protective shield for the Bishnoi terror syndicate.”

He added, “Ottawa’s open border mass immigration disaster has flooded our cities with this violence … deport them now or watch our country collapse under imported terror.”

Asylum claims are currently at record highs, with nearly 300,000 foreigners now in the country as asylum claimants, and hundreds more added daily.

The trend has been driven in part by foreign nationals using asylum claims as a means to evade deportation.

Last year, the Liberal government even called out this tactic after tens of thousands of foreign students claimed asylum just as their student visas were set to expire. In 2024, then immigration minister Marc Miller called it an “alarming trend” that was serving as a “backdoor entry into Canada.”

The asylum system has also become a well-known tool of human smugglers. In September, Postmedia profiled the black market industry of using visas obtained with fraudulent documents in order to move Indian nationals into Canada in order to claim asylum.

“They would just get a plane, land in Canada and after that…. Some of them would claim asylum right away (upon) landing in Canada. Some would connect with the next step (i.e. the smuggler step) and then go to the States,” Amandeep Singh Dhillon, a registered immigration agent, alleged at the time.

Canada’s modern refugee system dates back to 1973, when the federal government first formalized a means to process foreign nationals seeking protection from persecution in their home countries.

Although the refugee process always relied heavily on the honour system, until the current Liberal government came to power in 2015, the number of asylum claimants was usually kept below 10,000 per year.

Abuse and fraudulent claims occurred, but they were often tempered by placing visas on countries found to be yielding outsized numbers of fake claimants.

The best example being Mexico. In 2009, the government of then prime minister Stephen Harper placed a visa requirement on Mexican nationals, citing outsized numbers of Mexicans flying to Canada in order to claim asylum.

The Liberals removed the visa in 2016, only to reimpose it in 2024 after Mexican asylum claims once again spiked to all-time highs. In 2023 alone, 25,236 Mexican nationals claimed asylum; an average of 70 per day.

But it was in 2017 when asylum claims began to spike to new heights from which they haven’t really receded. That was the year that then prime minister Justin Trudeau issued a social media post reading “to those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.”

It rapidly became one of the most viewed statements ever issued by a Canadian prime minister, and likely contributed to an immediate wave of foreign nationals illegally entering Canada from the United States in order to claim asylum.

IN OTHER NEWS

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.