Niagara Falls facing 'limits' in accommodating influx of asylum seekers, mayor says

It started last summer with 87, grew to 300, and most recently shot up to about  2,000 hotel rooms that were being utilized in Niagara Falls, Ont., to accommodate asylum seekers sent there from Quebec.

And with nearly 3,000 migrants in total having been transferred since July, the city's community services are feeling the pressure on their already stretched resources to meet the needs of this sudden influx of people.

"We're trying to be good Canadians and do what we always do, which is always lend a hand. But there's limits to everything that we can physically do," said Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati.

"It's started to have an impact on our community in a lot of ways."

As tensions have simmered in Quebec over the tens of thousands of asylum seekers that have crossed into Canada on foot at the unofficial Roxham Road crossing, some 5,500 migrants have been bused to border towns in Ontario, including Niagara Falls, Windsor and Cornwall.

With strained resources and tourism season approaching, Niagara Falls is asking what happens next.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says it began transferring migrants arriving in Quebec to Ontario last July as Quebec's shelter system — and hotels rented by IRCC — reached capacity.

In a statement to CBC News, IRCC said that as of Feb. 13, 2,841 individuals have been transferred to Niagara Falls. 

There's no official breakdown of where all the migrants are travelling from, but home countries include Haiti and Colombia, among others, with people speaking French, Spanish and Haitian Creole.

As of Feb. 19, 2023, 951 hotels rooms were occupied by asylum claimants in Niagara Falls, IRCC said, tapering off from the peak.

Still, it's unclear when that number could spike again and what impact that might have on the community and its services, especially since some of the hotels are in the heart of the tourist district.

Meanwhile, Diodati has expressed some concern to Immigration Minister Sean Fraser about the upcoming tourist season.

"We have 40,000 people in Niagara Falls that count on tourism to feed their families, pay the rent, pay their mortgages," he said.

Although the government is paying the hotels to house the asylum seekers, tourists who would normally be paying for those rooms also eat at the restaurants and go to the attractions.