The federal government needs to do more to prevent misuse of visitors visas by people coming to Canada, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said.

“We’ve taken a number of measures throughout the summer, particularly to deal with the flow of people coming into the country,” Miller told CBC News last week.

“And it’s no surprise to anyone that … we need to do a stronger job in making sure that people that are coming here, for example on visitor’s visas, do so for those purposes and not for the purposes of … claiming asylum or finding their way into the U.S.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reports it encountered 21,929 migrants between border posts on the American side of the Canada-U.S. border between October 2023 and August 2024 – 17,810 of them in the Swanton Sector, which runs along Quebec’s border with New York and Vermont.

While that number is nowhere near as high as those associated with the United States’ southern border, it’s more than twice as many as the 8,686 encountered between border posts on the American side during the same time period in the previous year.

The year before that, CBP encountered only 2,238 migrants between border posts at the northern border.

Of the 21,929 stopped by U.S. Border Patrol officers, 12,992 — nearly 60 per cent of the total — came from India.

Miller said that visa applicants from India could face more scrutiny in future.

“We do see a number of people that are claiming asylum from India, from other countries, who are not getting a positive determination from the Immigration (and) Refugee Board, which is an indication to us that we have to take an increased look at how we accord visas in the first place,” he said.

Miller didn’t offer details of any new measures adopted by his department in response to the surge in border crossings. His office said the government is “exploring visa integrity measures.”

“I can’t go into all the details because people adjust when I speak publicly about what measures we’ve taken to turn some of the taps in a different way,” he said. “But we’re aware of it and we’re on top of it.”

The flow of migrants has spawned a lucrative business. Posts on social media platforms like Instagram and Tiktok feature migrants who have just crossed the border claiming it was easy to fly to Montreal and then walk into the U.S. 

Miller described those posts as “quite blatant.”

Miller said he has discussed the flow of migrants with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and David Cohen, U.S. ambassador to Canada.

“I think first and foremost, we owe it to the U.S. government … to make sure we that we are both doing a good job in making sure our borders are safe and secure,” Miller said.

He said the networks bringing migrants to the U.S. through Canada operate on word of mouth.

“They’re very sophisticated,” Miller said. “There are some elements at times of criminality to it. And it’s stuff we have to act on in multiple manners, including making sure that our security services have all the information and all the tools to be able to act.”