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Rang Roxham | |
![]() Roxham Road near south end during summer 2017 | |
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Namesake | Settlement midway along road |
Owner | Town of Champlain (US); Les Jardins-de-Napierville Regional County Municipality (Canada) |
Length | 5 mi (8.0 km) |
Addresses | 1–126 (US) 127–339 (Canada) |
Location | Champlain, NY, USA; Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, QC, Canada |
Postal code | 12919 (US) J0J 1V0 (Canada) |
Coordinates | 45°00′26″N 73°31′02″W / 45.0071°N 73.5172°W |
South end | North Star Road |
North end | Chemin Pleasant Valley ( ![]() |
Other | |
Known for | Use by immigrants to enter Canada irregularly and seek asylum |
Roxham Road[a] (French: chemin Roxham) is a 5-mile (8.0 km) rural road from the former hamlet of Perry Mills in the town of Champlain, New York, United States, generally north to the vicinity of the former hamlet of Bogton, in the municipality of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, Canada. It has existed since the early 19th century, before the Canada–United States border was formally established along the 45th parallel north[b] between the St. Lawrence and Connecticut rivers. For most of its length it is a rural two-lane blacktop; north of Parc Safari, it is also part of Quebec Route 202.
For most of its history, it was possible to freely cross the border via Roxham Road, since it largely carried local traffic. Canada established a small customs station just north of the border; the U.S. never followed suit, leaving Roxham an uncontrolled border crossing, even after Canada closed its customs station in the 1950s. That ended when Canadian authorities decided, in advance of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, to barricade all the uncontrolled land border crossings between Quebec and New York, as well as the neighboring U.S. state of Vermont. Since then Roxham has officially been a dead end in both directions at the border.
Until March 25, 2023, Roxham Road was a key "irregular" border crossing for persons who were in the United States and wished to apply for asylum in Canada.[4][5] This was because of a "loophole" in the "Safe Third Country Agreement" between Canada and the United States that did not provide for the return to the United States of persons claiming asylum in Canada if they entered Canada at a place other than an official border crossing.[4][6] Beginning in 2017, more than 90 percent of those who irregularly entered Canada seeking asylum did so via Roxham Road, making it a metonym for the complications of Canada's immigration policies.[6][7][8][9][10] Housing the asylum seekers required building facilities at the border,[11] a camp nearby (and then in Montreal's Olympic Stadium) at considerable expense to the Canadian government, and led to anti-immigration groups protesting near the border crossing. Under a 2022 change to the agreement that took effect at 12:01 a.m. on March 25, 2023, that is no longer the case for most (though not all) such persons who make such a claim within 14 days of entry into Canada.[6][12] The 2023 implementation of this "protocol" amending the agreement was seen as likely to stem the growth that had taken place since 2017 (other than during the pandemic shutdown of March 2020 to November 2021[6][13][14][15]) of Roxham Road being the entry point into Canada of large numbers of persons seeking asylum status.[6] Some of those individuals had been awaiting a decision on their immigration status in the U.S. and feared a negative outcome due to stricter immigration policies of Donald Trump's presidential administration, but many had just briefly passed through the U.S. to get to Canada, began entering Canada via Roxham in order to seek political asylum there.[16][6] Later, immigrants began coming to the United States specifically to make the crossing at Roxham and apply for asylum in Canada,[6] leading to criticism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government for its apparent failure to enforce Canadian immigration law. In 2023, the Roxham crossing was closed permanently. During the time it was widely used as an unofficial border crossing, more than 100,000 asylum seekers passed through it.[17]
Despite many Canadians' revulsion at the treatment of migrants and refugees in the United States, the large number of refugees fleeing that treatment by entering Canada "irregularly" led Roxham Road to become a kind of symbol for Canada's loss of control of its borders.
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