Global News published this video item, entitled ““He thinks you are money:” Survivor of human smuggling in Canada speaks out” – below is their description.
The deaths of four people, including a baby, at the Canada-U.S. Border in Manitoba have put a spotlight on Canada’s border policies and the perils of illegal human smuggling.
As desperate migrants struggle to enter the country hoping for a better life, many are left vulnerable to human smuggling operations in the face of tight immigration policies.
Global’s Heather Yourex-West spoke with survivor Mohammed Alajarmeh on how he fell prey to one such operation trying to enter Canada and what advocates say still needs to be done to help victims.
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. It extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres (3.85 million square miles), making it the world’s second-largest country by total area.
Its southern and western border with the United States, stretching 8,891 kilometres (5,525 mi), is the world’s longest bi-national land border. Canada’s capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Various Indigenous peoples inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years before European colonization. The Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British Parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with a monarch and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the Cabinet and head of government.
As a highly developed country, Canada has the seventeenth-highest nominal per-capita income globally as well as the thirteenth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index. Its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks.