NIAGARA FALLS — It’s a Wednesday morning in mid-May, and nearly every room in Niagara Falls’ Drummond Hill Presbyterian Church is occupied. Minister Wally Hong greets visitors in the foyer, directing them where to go. Workers from government and social-service organizations sit with brochures and laptops in a spacious room while, down the hall, groups fill smaller rooms, participating in informal English classes.
The church proclaims on its Facebook page that it has been “serving Christ and neighbours since 1802,” and over the past year, its neighbourhood has grown significantly: the church has become a community space — one where asylum seekers can cook foods from home, take classes, and find government services and employment help.
Most came into Canada via the unofficial Roxham Road border crossing in Quebec. Although changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement — which prevented people from claiming asylum in Canada if they entered at an official land-border crossing with the U.S. — mean that people attempting to cross into Canada via Roxham Road will now be returned to the U.S., there are still many people in need of support. Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada tells TVO Today that, as of July 24, it had 1,378 rooms in seven hotels, temporarily accommodating 1,993 asylum seekers. According to Niagara Region, migrants came from 82 different nationalities and speak 54 different languages.
At its peak near the end of March 2023, IRCC was accommodating over 7,900 asylum claimants in 3,525 hotel rooms across Canada; thousands of them were in Niagara. In response, local organizations have come together, and asylum seekers are sharing their skills and resources — but advocates and leaders say additional supports are necessary, and they’re calling on governments to do more.
Niagara Falls' Drummon Hill church on Lundy's Lane became an important community space for asylum seekers. (Justin Chandler)
“If you can’t speak English, you’re doomed,” says Carol, an asylum seeker who left Zimbabwe in November over safety concerns (TVO Today is using only her first name for her safety). She flew to the United States and wound up in New Jersey. While in the U.S., Carol researched her options and decided to come to Canada via Roxham Road. “It was a leap of faith,” she says. “I never imagined myself crossing that road.”
That process was “horrible,” she says. “YouTube only explains till you arrive at the border … You don't know that you’re going to get your phone taken. You don’t have your watch. You don’t know what time it is. You don’t know where you're going to sleep. You’re just flowing. You don’t know what is going to happen.” The only food available, she remembers, was cold sandwiches.
Carol says her time in Niagara Falls has been a “blessing.” She likes her hotel, she got a job, and people have been kind and accommodating. “Honestly speaking, I love Niagara Falls.”Still, she says, she knows others who struggle with the precarity of their situations and the support systems they must navigate.
Agenda segment, April 3, 2023: How changes to border rules affect Canada and the U.S.
Carol says that in her experience, most communication between officials and asylum seekers in hotels has been in English or French. She thinks this excludes asylum seekers who don’t speak either language. “If I can't read I won't do anything about it. I just sit.” Ultimately, she says, “You have to advocate for yourself.”
When Aghogho Oboh, 44, came to the church, he “was looking for community.” He chose not to go to an African church, because he wanted to “meet a different population with a different perspective.”
A journalist, he left Nigeria in the fall, flying to Washington, D.C., before coming into Canada at Roxham Road. “As a journalist in Nigeria, you’re constantly faced with danger. I was reporting around the issues of Boko Haram and the insecurity going on, which meant I was in the line of fire with the state authorities or with Boko Haram,” he says.
When he was younger and single, Oboh had a higher risk tolerance. Now he has a wife and young daughter. “The more the more I'm around,” he says, “the more I put my family at risk.”
Aghogho Oboh is a journalist who left Nigeria due to safety concerns. (Justin Chandler)
Since arriving in Niagara, he’s volunteered with local non-profit Project Share and gotten a work permit, job, and social-insurance number. He’s waiting for an eligibility exam before he can get residency status. As of August, he’s started to co-rent an apartment, and he’s making plans to bring his wife and daughter over.
“I understand it’s the country’s way things are done. It's a process that has to be followed through,” he says, acknowledging the volume of work immigration officials are going through. “I understand the process. I just wish that things were a bit faster, you know? It’s something I think will help a lot of people.”
Agenda segment, May 12, 2023: Reflections on Canada's immigration narrative
Jim Diodati, mayor of Niagara Falls, warned in March of the economic impact of increased migration and noted a lack of housing and services for migrant workers, especially during the tourist season. The mayors of Windsor and Cornwall have likewise called on the federal government for more support.
A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada told TVO Today via email that “IRCC has established open lines of communication and meets with stakeholders on a weekly basis to address any concerns and support operations accordingly. IRCC also provides resources to asylum claimants in both official languages, and translates documents into the most common languages including Arabic, Creole and Farsi.”
It notes that provinces are “generally responsible for managing and delivering social services, but IRCC works to “support and alleviate any excessive pressures” by, for example, arranging information sessions in the hotels to inform asylum seekers of available services.
Agenda segment, April 6, 2023: Is Canada doing immigration wrong?
In March, Niagara Region requested about $6 million in emergency provincial funding to address social-assistance applications. At the region’s Public Health and Social Services Committee meeting on August 8, councillors voted to approve a staff recommendation that the region budget about $1.3 million in funding from the province to support social assistance and employment.
For its part, Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills points in an email statement to the upwards of $96 million it’s dedicated in 2022-23 to more than 150 organizations “that deliver a range of services to help refugees and other newcomers learn English or French, settle, access training, and find jobs.” Refugee claimants, it adds, “are also eligible to access provincial services including elementary and secondary education, settlement and employment supports and emergency shelter programs.”
But local groups say it’s not enough — and they’ve come together to try to fill the gaps. When asylum seekers first arrived in Niagara, organizations worked individually and “things were just all over the map,” says Janet Madume, director of the Welland Heritage Council & Multicultural Centre. That’s changed, though, as more than 30 organizations are now sharing resources and planning together: “Working in silos will not address these issues.” Her organization has worked with its partners to provide social assistance, register children in school, and offer English classes. In the spring, it organized a job fair and an information session for employers to help them understand how to hire newcomers. Madume says it usually takes about three months for an asylum seeker to get a work permit.
While she acknowledges the challenges, she says that, “in the long run, I think it's going to be really beneficial for Niagara as a region. We’re going to grow.”
Olayinka Animashaun, who owns a restaurant and grocery store, works to support migrants in Niagara. (Justin Chandler)
Some of those offering local assistance have direct experience of the kinds of challenges asylum seekers face. In 2016, Olayinka Animashaun fled an abusive relationship in Nigeria. She found herself in Toronto, without her children, looking for help settling into her new homeland.
“I almost went into a depression when I got here,” she says. “Here, the stigmatization that you are a refugee is a big one.” Initially, she says, she felt like a “walking corpse.”
She credits the numerous agencies and community organizations around Toronto for helping her find resources. Animashaun settled in the Niagara region and is now a Canadian citizen. She scrimped and borrowed and, in 2019, opened a restaurant and grocery store called Chrispy African Market and Cuisine, which imports mostly African food and supplies.
She has since remarried, reunited with her children, and become a crucial member of the ad hoc community that supports migrants in the region. When TVO Today visited the restaurant, Animashaun’s phone almost never stopped ringing — but not with customers placing orders. The first call came from a pregnant international student updating Animashaun on her pursuit of health insurance before her delivery date. “Don’t just keep quiet — it’s Canada,” she reassured the caller.
While Animashaun was on the phone, another pregnant woman entered, on her way to speak with a public-health nurse who holds office hours at the store.
Agenda segment, Dec. 5, 2022: Can immigration solve Canada's labour shortages?
Animashaun tells TVO Today that, with few options for African food in Niagara, her store quickly became a first stop for newcomers. “The next thing they do,” she says, “is ask for information.”
Sometimes, they need more than advice. At one point, she says, there were 11 people living with her as her family supported them through their migration needs — and it became overwhelming.
Animashaun founded NAACO, or the Niagara African Caribbean Culture Organization, at the urging of her husband. Though the organization was initially devoted to assisting Black and African migrants in the region, “we see that it’s more than we thought,” she says, adding they’ve widened their services to include all those who need them.
Food remains an issue for many refugees, Animashaun, says, showing TVO Today a box of the snack-size foods provided to the refugees in the hotel: cheddar Goldfish snacks, Dad’s oatmeal cookies, and small boxes of Raisin Bran. Food quality, she says, is a perennial problem. And refugees have few options for complaining or tackling gaps in the system, she says. On her phone are text messages and voice memos from motel-bound refugees. “I cannot switch off this phone for one minute," she says, “because people might die.”
Back at Drummond Hill church, asylum seekers work to give one another a hand.
In one room, Rydder Hernandez, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, teaches English to a group of asylum seekers from Spanish-speaking countries. He says there’s a long wait for formal English classes, and the church’s minister, Hong, invited him to volunteer.
Hong says that, despite living in close proximity to one another in hotels, many asylum seekers do not know one another, because of cultural and language barriers. The church has become a place where people with the shared experience can gather and find community.
In addition to English classes, programming includes art workshops aimed at supporting mental health, tech support for people wanting to make websites or podcasts, and lessons on how to navigate different facets of life in Canada, such as packing lunch for school kids or setting up a bank account.
Carol says she participates in the art program and in group cooking at the church.
“The food I eat in Africa is different from the food that I eat [in the hotel],” she says. Hong asks participants what they want and buys ingredients so they can cook at the church and take leftovers home.
“When you're in the hotel, normally it's TV, sleeping, and thinking about if you are going to be here permanently or if they are going to send you back home,” Carol says. “When you’re here, it's mostly people talking about their different circumstances, where they came from, their problems … Then you feel relief like you’re not alone in this.”
Ontario Hubs are made possible by the Barry and Laurie Green Family Charitable Trust and Goldie Feldman in Memoriam.
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