Last year almost 40,000 people entered Quebec from New York via a rural road, Cecco reports. Authorities encountered another 5,000 in January alone. 

"This is in many ways a new issue [for Canada]," said Abdulla Daoud, executive director of The Refugee Centre in Montreal. " … [W]e’ve seen that Canada’s immigration infrastructure can handle an increase in population, but the asylum system wasn’t ever built to accommodate this sort of issue." 

In the other direction, about 2,000 crossed into the U.S. from Canada between Oct. 1 and Feb. 28, Julia Ainsley and Didi Martinez reported last week in NBC News. That’s a notable increase from the same period a year earlier. Ethan Weinstein of VTDigger has more on the local effects. 

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and today's great Forum Daily team includes Dynahlee Padilla-Vasquez, Becka Wall and Katie Lutz. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

And if you’re looking for a different take from the Forum, don't miss our new TikTok channel!  

CHOOSING PROXIMITY — "We were present. We walked. We prayed with people. We listened to their stories," Alma Ruth, founder of the faith-based nonprofit Practice Mercy Foundation, told Sandra Sanchez of Border Report. The organization hosted students from Florida on a spring-break mission service for migrants. "The one thing I really wanted to focus on was the idea that God is a God that sits with you in your pain and in your grief and God is with you in this," said Southeastern University junior Anna Coleman. 

INNOVATION — Researchers at Stanford University have fresh evidence that immigrants boost American innovation, Katia Savchuk of Stanford shares in Phys.org. From 1990 to 2016, 16% of inventors and 23% of patent recipients were immigrants, researchers found. 

U VISA BACKLOGS — Three North Carolina organizations have joined two federal lawsuits over long delayed U visa applications, which help immigrant victims and witnesses of crime, reports DJ Simmons of The Charlotte Observer. "It’s more stark the suffering, the isolation, the vulnerability that will continue when you have a cooperative victim who doesn’t have the work permit they need," said Anna Cushman, an attorney with the Battered Immigrant Project at Legal Aid of North Carolina. 

RUSSIANS AT RISK — A year after the Biden administration suspended removals of Russian asylum seekers amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, it apparently is moving to resume them, Victoria Bekiempis reports in The Guardian. "Russia has been incredibly vocal about their feelings towards opposition," said Jennifer Scarborough, a Texas-based attorney whose clients include four Russian asylum seekers. "Just the fact that they fled Russia to come to the United States puts them at risk." 

‘MISSIONARY OF HOPE’ — Meet Sr. Lidia Mara Silva de Souza and take in her experiences with migrants via her Q & A with Luis Donaldo González in Global Sisters Report. "I am a migrant because God called me to this mission … I am also a migrant because of the specific call God has given me to be a Scalabrinian, which is a missionary of hope in the world of migration," Silva de Souza says. 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan