A black bust of César Chávez, the famous American union leader and farm worker activist, glared into President Joe Biden’s back as he began his first official day in the Oval Office last week. 

Every time a U.S. president is sworn into office, they are allowed to redecorate the Oval Office however they wish, and usually choose to add personal touches that reflect their vision for the country. Biden’s decision to include the bust of a labour leader who led immigrant farm workers to fight the brutal working conditions of California’s farms was not lost on those who support newcomers in both the U.S. and Canada.  

On his first day in office, Biden ended a U.S. ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. He also halted construction of former president Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico. But Chris Ramsaroop, an organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers, says Biden will need to do a lot more to fix America’s immigration and migrant labour system. “What are the concrete, meaningful steps they are going to take to actually have both racial and economic justice?” he asks. 

Ramsaroop wants to see the U.S. and Canada make major changes to their migrant labour systems, including offering permanent status to any farm workers who arrive on Canadian soil to work. But the COVID-19 pandemic is imperilling migrant farm workers in southwestern Ontario. In August, Global News reported over 1,300 had been infected with COVID-19. Justicia is working with Foodshare to ship food to workers stuck on their farms in quarantine. “We’ve been doing food drops all over rural Ontario,” Ramsaroop says. Justicia is also holding sessions on Facebook Live to teach workers about their rights on accessing employment assistance and their rights during COVID-19. They’ll soon be holding a session on racial profiling. 

Ramsaroop is skeptical that the Biden administration will do so without significant pressure from migrant workers and their allies to improve labour laws. While Biden pitched himself as someone who would ensure the worst human rights abuses of the Trump administration’s immigration officials would not happen on his watch, sector experts say it won’t be so simple. Canadian refugee organizations say they’re more focused on how COVID-19 is affecting their clients than the incoming U.S. administration, but the virus’s effects on immigration and Biden’s campaign promises are not so easily separated. 

What is Biden’s immigration plan? 

During his first 100 days in office, Biden is promising an overhaul of the Trump administration’s restrictive and often inhumane immigration policies. He has already reversed a ban on arrivals from seven Muslim-majority countries, but his plans include eliminating restrictions to asylum claims made by applicants who travelled through Mexico or Guatemala, those who cited domestic or gang violence as their reasons for seeking asylum, and people who sought protection because of their LGBTQ identity. Biden is also promising to investigate human rights abuses allegedly committed by immigration officers at the U.S.’s southern border. “As president, Biden will move immediately to ensure that the U.S. meets its responsibilities as both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants,” the president’s campaign platform says. 

The president isn’t planning to stop at redressing the wrongs of his predecessor. Biden is also promising to convene a meeting of leaders from North and Central American countries, including Canada, to “address the factors driving migration and to propose a regional resettlement solution.” Biden’s platform doesn’t go into additional detail, but it appears as though he wants to try and find out how best to ensure that migrants who flee their country of origin have a safe place to live.

Biden is also promising to convene a meeting of leaders from North and Central American countries, including Canada, to “address the factors driving migration and to propose a regional resettlement solution.”

Perhaps of interest to newcomer organizations in the U.S. is the reboot of the White House Task Force on New Americans. Launched in 2014 under former president Barack Obama, it helped educate and settle American newcomers. The Task Force coordinated language lessons, community support, and entrepreneurship classes to new Americans in the hopes of improving their job prospects and civic engagement. 

Reforming the immigration system will also require Biden to work closely with Congress on a package of reforms: streamlining the visa application system for temporary foreign workers, providing a faster path to citizenship for U.S. migrant farmworkers, and drafting a “path to citizenship” for an estimated 11 million undocumented people. 

What will Biden’s administration mean for Canadian newcomer organizations?

Over the course of the Trump administration, the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), an umbrella organization representing Canadian and international NGOs, made headlines after winning a court case to strike down the Safe Third Country Agreement. This policy between Canada and the U.S. prohibits refugees whose claims are denied in one country from then applying to the other country for asylum. 

The CCR, along with Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches, pointed to the brutal treatment faced by asylum seekers from the U.S. who were turned back by Canadian officials as a violation of their Charter right to security. This is just one example of the work done by newcomer organizations to try and ensure a safer journey for asylum seekers travelling to Canada. 

However, Janet Dench, executive director of the CCR, says Trump’s immigration policies are not entirely to blame. “Things got worse under Trump, but by no means were the issues limited to things that happened under Trump,” she says. “What is needed is not just undoing what Trump did, but also to have real reform in many, many areas.” Immigration detention is one of them. For many years, asylum seekers in the U.S. have alleged harsh treatment by U.S. immigration officials, including the denial of food, abuse, and being placed in cells alongside convicted criminals. 

The CCR has fought against the Safe Third Country Agreement since it first came into force in 2004. Just last year, they and their partners scored a legal victory. A Federal Court judge ruled that the agreement was unconstitutional, although the Canadian government successfully fought to have the rule upheld until this January while an appeal made its way through the court system.  However, Dench says the CCR can still encourage the Canadian government to drop its legal appeal and end the Safe Third Country Agreement once and for all. Even if Trump is no longer in the White House, the CCR says this rule is still putting asylum seekers in dangerous conditions. 

“What is needed is not just undoing what Trump did, but also to have real reform in many, many areas.”

Travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic — namely, the Canada-U.S. border closure, are also cause for concern, Dench adds. “We continue to call on the government to drop that provision so that people who are seeking asylum in Canada would be able to enter Canada despite the border ban and go into quarantine,” she says. Some organizations who work with newcomers consider the COVID-19 pandemic to have a far bigger impact on their work than the new administration — and not just at the border. 

How is COVID-19 impacting immigration from the U.S. and elsewhere?

When Anne Woolger founded Matthew House, a Toronto-based refugee shelter, in 1998, many of the newcomers she was helping were from Iran or Afghanistan or Azerbaijan. Today, they are from Ethiopia and Eritrea, a variety of Central American countries, Syria, and elsewhere. There have always been waves of immigration followed by dry spells, she says, and the prospect of a change in the number of asylum seekers coming to Canada isn’t surprising at all. 

With the Biden administration’s promise to loosen restrictions, Woolger expects to see the number of refugees coming from the U.S. to decline as they find a way to have their claims heard south of the border. “There will definitely be less refugee claimants,” she says. However, for her, the biggest changes that newcomer organizations are facing right now aren’t related to the U.S. election at all. “COVID is the thing I’m wondering will have more of an effect than the Biden administration,” Woolger says. “There will always be refugees in the world, and they’ll always be trying to get to Canada.” 

Human rights abuses in the U.S. immigration system predate the COVID-19 pandemic by many years. Border bans and public health restrictions are nonetheless making the experience of claiming asylum in Canada or the U.S. difficult, if not impossible. Many of Canada’s asylum seekers arrive by air, Woolger says, and airlines are cutting back or eliminating flights altogether due to minimal demand. “There’ll be less flights coming here,” she says. 

Woolger hopes world leaders can start working together not only to halt the spread of COVID-19, but also prevent the root causes of forced migration in the first place. “If we can work on more durable solutions for people in their home countries, then hopefully there will be less clashes in the world and less refugees,” she says. 

At Matthew House, COVID-19 is changing how the organization is able to actually support refugee claimants once they arrive. Woolger says Matthew House connects them with everything from ESL classes to orientation courses about life in Canada, along with help getting social assistance. It even has a preparation course for the refugee hearing asylum seekers will need to attend to determine whether they will be allowed to remain in Canada. 

All of that is more physically distanced or virtual.  For a newly arrived refugee, having a sense of belonging and closeness is incredibly important. “We just cannot in that same way create that community and the physical aspect of togetherness in a positive way,” Woolger says. “The smile, the handshake — that kind of thing is not the same.”

What are Canadian newcomer organizations doing now that Trump is out? 

Canada’s government did not trumpet the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration, but nor has our country been as welcoming to refugees and newcomers as it should be. Hate crime rates against Jews, Muslims, Black people, and other oppressed groups rose 47 percent in 2017, according t0 Statistics Canada. That was of course at the midpoint of Trump’s presidency. But the effects of his hateful rhetoric were not confined to the U.S. “We also saw a rise in alt-right or white nationalist activities in our own county and misinformation, especially on social media,” says Yasir Naqvi, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. “All those things are worrying trends.”

Over the past four years, the Institute has tried to proactively work on curbing these trends in Canada. At citizenship ceremonies it hosts across the country, Naqvi says the Institute brings together local residents and new Canadian citizens to share stories. It also encourages new Canadians to become involved in the process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. 

What’s next?

With a new administration in the White House, Naqvi expects the Institute will be able to work with American organizations on a process of democratic renewal and healing for the United States. 

One simple way that work is already happening is through a podcast the Institute is developing with Bertelsmann Foundation and Humanity in Action, two organizations founded in the U.S., called “How To Fix Democracy.” Bringing Canadian perspectives into a conversation about not only how to create more inclusive communities, but how to make democracy work better for everyone, is the sort of work Naqvi believes the Institute can expand on with the end of the Trump administration. 

“Regardless of who the president of the United States is, we feel we have an important role to play,” he says. 

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