The category of irregular immigrant refers to: 1) those who come to a country through legal channels, with valid documentation, but who do not respect the terms of their admissions (for instance, those on visitors’ visas; 2) those who enter country legally but with fraudulent documentation; 3) and those who enter country in an illegal way, that is without going through formal admission (Boyd, 2006). In addition to being called irregular migrants, terms such as “non-status” or “undocumented” migrants are often used to denote such population of illegal migrants (Boyd, 2006, p.5). Even though issue of irregular migrants in Canada has been neglected for a long time, it started to attract the attention of wider public following the amnesty-based federal Long Term Illegal Program between August, 1983 and July, 1985 (Boyd, 2006). The past three Liberal immigration ministers (Coderre, Sgro and Volpe) had plans to “regularize” illegal immigrants, but such plans were never brought into existence (Boyd, 2006).

Illegal migration to Canada is seen as an end result of the mismatch between the labour shortage in Canadian economy and skilled workers who are selected to come to Canada according to the point system. Rising trends of educational attainment among the Canadian born and its product, gentrification have led to the greater demand for unskilled labour agriculture, construction and domestic services, while at the same time the point system hinders many applicants with manual skills and low level of education from qualifying for legal admission (Boyd, 2006). The estimated number of irregular migrants is relatively high, ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 (Boyd, 2006, p.6). In December, 2003 responsibility for detentions and removal of irregular migrants was transferred from Citizenship and Immigration Canada to border agency which was created as a response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Brennan, 2008). In one recent article, a Canadian national paper cites the words of Auditor General Sheila Fraser who states “that Canada’s border agency has lost track of 41,000 illegal immigrants “(Brennan, 2008). More specifically, she points out that “ the agency’s working inventory contains 22,000 individuals with enforceable removal orders, whose whereabouts are known to the agency; the remaining 41,000 cases are individuals with immigration warrants for removal, whose whereabouts are unknown to the agency” (Brennan, 2008).These missing individuals, as is pointed out in the report are largely refugee claimants.

The high number of irregular migrants in Canada reflects the lack of an effective tracking system employed by border agency. Such inefficacy of the system currently in place partially stems from the fact that it is generally hard to deport a failed refugee claimant out of the country since there are many legal rules to ensure that person is not detained or tossed out of the country without cause or due process (as cited in Keung, 2008). Also, part of the problem is the lack of space in the federal immigration detention centres, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver (Keung, 2008). Still, the biggest obstacle to an effective tracking system, as stated in Fraser’s report, is the fact that “Canada does not monitor the exit of travellers from the country, and therefore the agency does not know whether individuals have left the country as required in their temporary permit”(Brennan, 2008).