Canadian Conservative Party MP and immigration critic Michelle Rempel was in Emerson, Manitoba Friday to dare Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to come to this Canada-U.S. border crossing to see for himself the chaos of an open border. After the news conference an argument broke out between pro and anti-asylum seekers.
Rempel was there with the local Member of Parliament (MP) Ted Falk to host a news conference that again put the spotlight on this prairie town that has attracted the attention of the world as so-called “asylum seekers” sneak across the border from the U.S. Many of them are Somalis living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who express concern that President Donald Trump wants to deport them.
Falk also called on Trudeau to see for himself what was happening in Emerson.
“We need to protect the integrity of our borders,” he said. “We must always consider our national security and do our due diligence to make sure we know who is entering, where they’re entering our country and why.”
At the end of the news conference, one local yelled at Rempel and said while the Conservatives were in power they did nothing to amend the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement that stops illegals from entering Canada from the U.S. at official border crossings but implicity allows them to cross elsewhere and claim refugee status.
“You were in power for 10 years and did nothing on that same loophole,” Emerson resident Joyce Dayton told Rempel. “All of us are from immigrants here, there’s not one of who isn’t.”
Rempel replied to Dayton, saying that she was in Emerson because Rempel believes in legal, but not illegal, immigration. “What we’ve seen year-over-year is that there’s been a big increase in the number of people crossing the border,” Rempel said. “It’s certainly become a problem in the last year.”
The local municipal authority, Reeve Greg Janzen, was also on hand to tell the crowd that he wasn’t opposed to immigration but that he was opposed to people just walking across the border and claiming refugee status.
“Let them claim asylum at the Port of Entry then they don’t have to walk across in the snowbanks in the middle of winter or now into dark, try and get into Emerson to get picked then they’re brought to the CBSA,” said Janzen, who has conducted countless interviews with international news agencies since January, when the illegal refugee crisis began.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale also visited Emerson earlier this year and proclaimed that the “law is being enforced” while doling out a stipend to the local volunteer fire department to deal with an additional tasks.
In a email statement, Goodale’s press secretary, Scott Beardsley, essentially reiterated that message Friday, saying that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Border Security Agency will continue to deal with the “situation” in safe and secure fashion and that “they have the tools need to enforce the law.”