Cabinet Pulls the Plug on Mexican and Czech Visa-free Travel

by Michelle Collins

Published July 15, 2009

The decision to impose visa requirements on Mexico came down to one more vote in favour than against at the Cabinet table earlier this year, sources say. Subsequent months of intense lobbying by senior Canadian and Mexican officials trying to overturn the decision were unsuccessful.

And now that the decision is official, experts and insiders spanning refugee, trade and general foreign policy issues are lining up to take shots at what is being described as one of the most perplexing—and possibly damaging—foreign policy decisions the government has taken in some time.

The Final Blow

Since becoming immigration minister in November 2008, Jason Kenney has made no secret of his frustrations with Canada's refugee system, including the number of refugee claimants coming from Mexico.

In a speech to the Canadian Council for Refugees in Toronto in November, Mr. Kenney raised the possibility of a two-tier system where applicants from what he called "liberal democracies" like Mexico, Britain and the Czech Republic are treated differently than those from conflict zones or totalitarian societies.

When a United Nations report in March showed a 30 per cent increase in the number of people seeking asylum in Canada, Mr. Kenney told the National Post this was "clearly an abuse of Canada's generosity."

Mr. Kenney also said that a 90 per cent rejection rate of claims made by Mexicans at Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board "would suggest wide scale and almost systematic abuse."

Recent reports on the Immigration and Refugee Board have foretold of such crises and flatly stated the board desperately required more resources to respond to a growing number of refugee claims. Despite this, however, Mr. Kenney told Embassy in April there would be no additional funding.

"The chairman of the IRB tells me that it would require tripling the size of the IRB to deal with the current backlog," Mr. Kenney said. "That's clearly not an option, particularly during tight fiscal times.

As one senior diplomat who has previously been posted to Mexico told Embassy on Tuesday, the visa requirement is something that had been looming for some time, though only recently was it actively discussed.

According to sources, the split Cabinet vote that saw visa requirements adopted was held several months ago. The decision was taken quietly and never announced, and insiders believe the government might have been waiting until after the annual Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Mexico in early August to make it public.

However, efforts were being undertaken behind the scenes to head off what was seen as a disastrous decision. Insiders say that for at least two months, top officials from the Mexican government have been treading through Ottawa, attempting to negotiate their way out of a visa requirement. As well, Foreign Affairs officials like Guillermo Rishchynski, Canada's ambassador to Mexico, were busy meeting with counterparts in the Prime Minister's Office, lobbying hard—though ultimately unsuccessfully—against the new requirement.

Then, over the past few weeks, reports began to emerge that the government was considering slapping visa restrictions on Mexico and re-imposing them on the Czech Republic. Those who knew the truth remained tight-lipped and extraordinarily cautious about who they told, and how much was said, but word slowly spread.

An article that ran in a Mexican newspaper, Excelsior, last week referred to such rumours, as did an earlier report in a newspaper in Prague. The article in Mexico had been penned by Isabel Studer Noguez, former deputy director for Canada at Mexico's ministry of foreign affairs.

Then, last week, a senior official with the Mexican Embassy in Ottawa confirmed with Embassy that visa requirements had been approved by the government but would not say any more. It was only Monday afternoon that Mr. Kenney went public with the news.

In a statement, Mr. Kenney cited soaring refugee claims from Mexico, which have tripled since 2005, as the reason for imposing visa requirements at 12:01 a.m. on July 14. In 2008, the number of claims reached 9,400, representing 25 per cent of all claims, the statement said. Only 11 per cent were accepted.

"In addition to creating significant delays and spiraling new costs in our refugee program, the sheer volume of these claims is undermining our ability to help people fleeing real persecution," Mr. Kenney said.

The Mexican Embassy in Ottawa responded with its own press release, just before 5 p.m. Monday, stating that it "regrets the decision."

"During the past few months Mexico has held consultations with Canadian authorities to assess other measures to deal with the problem of fraudulent claims," it read.

The Mexican government blamed the growing number of refugee claims from Mexico on illegitimate organizations that charge fees and mislead Mexicans acting in good faith. They also hammered at the delays causing havoc in Canada's overburdened, underfunded refugee system.

"Organizations have taken advantage of Canadian response times to assess refugee claims, where excessive delays have become appealing in the filing of illegitimate cases," they said.

The Fallout

Years ago when Canada, the U.S. and Mexico were negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, Demetri Papademetriou, director of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., helped negotiate the migration sections. At that time, Canada was adamant there would be no visas.

"I recall how clear Canada was that they were not going to impose a visa for Canada and how clear the U.S. was that they were going to maintain a visa requirement," Mr. Papademetriou said. "Canada has always stuck to its guns."

But Mr. Papademetriou and others say the rising refugee claimants to Canada signalled that changes may be on the horizon. Additional factors, say experts, are the global economic recession that has wiped out jobs in the U.S. as well as remittances to Mexico, the worsening narcotics-related violence spreading across Mexico, and the Canadian government's desire to harmonize security with the U.S.

Still, while the official reaction of the Mexican government could be described as reserved—in part, sources say, because they'd resigned themselves to the visa requirements weeks, if not months, ago—there is no doubt it has punctured nerves across the country and Latin American region.

"They were extremely concerned by that, it caught them by surprise," said Mr. Papademetriou of the Mexican government's reaction when it learned of the new visa requirements. "By the time it had reached the highest political level, there was this sort of mobilization of political resources to try to see what might be possible."

But beyond the few people who had caught word of the looming visa requirement, Mr. Kenney's announcement Monday afternoon was a shock.

The Canadian Embassy in Mexico City is ill-equipped to handle visa applications and is expected to be overwhelmed for quite some time. Reports on Tuesday said the mission had temporarily closed its doors and the web site states processing of visas will take up to 45 days.

Canada's business and tourism sectors were quick to condemn the government's decision. Tourism officials warned the effects are potentially "catastrophic" and they have called on the government to delay implementation until Nov. 15, 2009.

In recent years, they say, Canada has welcomed 250,000 tourists from Mexico, 50 per cent of whom visit during July and August. Mexico is the fourth biggest overseas market for Canadian tourism, bringing in approximately $265 million annually.

Liberal Immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua said the Conservatives have risked erecting new hurdles to legitimate travel with a NAFTA partner, and that there could be serious economic consequences.

"We've heard concerns that there are too many false refugee claims coming from Mexico," Mr. Bevilacqua said, "But we think the need to slap a blanket visa requirement on the entire population of a country is a damning indictment of the Conservatives' broken, inefficient refugee determination system"

NDP Immigration critic Olivia Chow was equally critical and said the decision will inflict a lot of hardship on both Mexicans and Canadians.

"It's closing the door to cover up their incompetence. For two years huge numbers of vacancies were left in the Immigration and Refugee Board," Ms. Chow said. "It reminds me of Bill C-50 and how the Conservatives had the immigration backlog grow from 650,000 to 900,000, and instead of fixing the real problem they went and closed the door and froze the applications and no one could apply from March to November of last year, and now only those within 38 categories can apply."

Others, meanwhile, say this will have a negative effect on Canada's foreign policy priority of engagement with Latin America, particularly because it will appear that Canada and the U.S. are one and the same in their policies.

"I don't know why Kenney would win on this issue," a source familiar with the political wrangling that happened at the Cabinet table and behind the scenes told Embassy on condition of anonymity. "It's a loser for the government's Americas policy, a loser on the trade front, and it will harm the Canadian tourism industry. What's the win? Why did they push for this?"

Annette Hester, a senior fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said the decision to impose visas is "incredibly unfortunate."

"It adds to the list of aggravants and I think it doesn't help develop credence for Canada's Americas policies," Ms. Hester said. "It is hard to judge, but you could speculate or you could imagine that countries in the Americas observe that Canada's reaction to strife and difficulty...might be perceived as one of 'I'll protect myself' and not one of 'I understand you're having a very difficult time, what can we do to help you?'"

Carol Wise, an associate professor at the University of Southern California's School of International Relations, said that Canada's visa requirement is a harsh blow against Mexico, and signals a deterioration of relations for the continent.

"I think it's probably going to be more bitterness given that we've constructed a $7-billion wall at the border and Canadians were always seen as the partner that had better understanding and a more humane attitude toward Mexico," Ms. Wise said. "We are really, really flirting with the collapse of any sense of a North American community."

Meanwhile, Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said she was very upset to hear of the visas and said Canada's refugee system wrongly characterizes Mexico as being able to protect its citizens when it often cannot.

"[Refugee claims] are one of the few options that people have for being able to get out of the situation where they're being abused and Mexico has been a country where there was a possibility at least for people who had sufficient money to buy an airfare, and that's much cheaper than having to pay for a smuggler," Ms. Dench said. "Unfortunately the policies of a government like Canada will force refugees into the hands of smugglers by putting on the visa requirement."

mcollins@embassymag.ca