It started with a WhatsApp message that read like an answer to the prayers of thousands of immigrants fearing deportation by President Trump.
Canada wanted them, it promised — a revelation that filled Haitians across the United States with hope and helped to encourage an exodus to the north.
There was just one problem: the information was false. Nonetheless thousands of Haitians living legally in the US have crossed into Canada over the past two months rather than risk being sent back to their Caribbean island.
They have quickly discovered the immigration criteria are less forgiving than they had been led to believe.
To cope with the influx, Montreal’s Olympic stadium was pressed into service last week as a shelter for up to 1,050 asylum seekers.
Advertisement
According to the city’s mayor, 250 to 300 people, mostly thought to be Haitians, are seeking asylum in Canada each day, up from 50 a day in the first half of last month.
The crisis has its roots in May when the White House threatened to end within months the temporary protection status (TPS) that has shielded up to 60,000 Haitians from deportation since the 2010 earthquake in their country.
A New York immigration lawyer convened a meeting for Haitians at a church in New Jersey in June to explain Canada’s immigration system.
Afterwards a WhatsApp message began to circulate, stating that “the Consul of Canada in the USA held a meeting in New Jersey for more than two hours”. It invited all Haitians (with or without TPS) to apply for residency in Canada.
The message gave the name of the lawyer, Macx Jean-Louis, and a false number. It said that Canada would cover any “fees”.
Advertisement
Mr Jean-Louis has since had hundreds of calls from people who received the message or saw a YouTube video of the meeting that was mislabelled to suggest it had taken place at the Canadian consulate.
He believes the message originated from a person living in Montreal who “was not even at the meeting but he put out the fake news”.