Niagara Falls ‘at breaking point' after surge in migrants

Telegraph

27-04-2025

The lobby of the Wyndham Garden Tower Hotel in Niagara Falls at 8am is busy with chatter in all manner of languages.
The chatter is not from tourists heading out to admire the mist-covered waterfalls, however, but from children who are living at the hotel after arriving from Africa with parents seeking asylum.
Minutes later they are gone, climbing into two yellow buses to take them to school.
The scene plays out in 11 nearby hotels each morning.
The influx of migrants has taken the city to breaking point, according to its mayor, who has to manage the stress of having more asylum seekers per capita than anywhere else in the country, with all the strains that places on schools, hospitals and other services.
'I gotta tell you our shelters are full, our transitional housing is full, the drug problem is like it's never been before,' said Jim Diodati.
'We've got thousands of asylum seekers, we're just coming out of Covid which was difficult for a tourist destination like Niagara Falls. We've been hit from all sides continuously.'
Niagara Falls, with its 15,000 hotel rooms, is where many asylum seekers end up as they find their feet and wait for their claim to be processed.
Now Mr Diodati's fears that Canada and his city are set for an influx of illegal immigrants fleeing a Donald Trump crackdown.
'It's a big border, and in a lot of places there's no fences, and we're just thinking, how much can one country handle?' he said, sitting at a table filled with gifts from visiting delegations, including tea from Taiwan and a box of Turkish Delight. 'How much can one city handle?'
Canadians go to the polls on Monday to elect a prime minister. Mark Carney, the Liberal leader who succeeded Justin Trudeau, is favourite to win.
Pierre Poilievre, a populist Conservative with Trump-inspired nicknames and bombast, has seen his fortunes stall after the American president infuriated Canadians by imposing tariffs and promising to seize their country.
Housing shortages and a cost of living crisis have made immigration one of the key battlegrounds.
The Liberal government capped the number of new permanent residents at 395,000 in 2025, down from 500,000 a year earlier, in a country of 41 million. Further cuts will follow.
Mr Poilievre has also promised to lower the numbers without offering specifics.
'These out-of-touch Liberals inflated housing costs, drove up the cost of food, pushed two million people to food banks, unleashed crime on our streets, ruined our immigration system,' Mr Poilievre said.
Mr Diodati, who has fought and won four elections as an independent, has seen it all from his cluttered office.
At its peak Niagara Falls (not to be muddled with a city of the same name on American soil) was home to 5,000 asylum seekers among a population of a little over 100,000.
'They usually take some of the lower rental places, which means it leaves less for the locals,' he said.
It brings challenges for local businesses and for the hotels, even if some are happy to pocket cash from the federal government.
'There's been people who've called and said, 'Are there asylum seekers at this hotel?' he said. 'They want to stay where they feel like they're on vacation with other travellers.'
In 2024, more than 54,000 asylum seekers arrived in Canada. Those that arrive at Toronto's international airport are among those bussed to Niagara Falls, less than two hours away.
What was meant to be a temporary solution is looking increasingly permanent, said Mr Diodati.
At the Wyndham, the country's refugee agency has taken over the basement. Families come for a buffet in the morning, while visitors breakfast on pancakes and maple syrup upstairs.
American tourists rub shoulders with African mothers wheeling pushchairs into the lifts.
'Every day that I am here I thank God. I can't believe it,' said one recent arrival from Tanzania.
Tensions are evident elsewhere in the city. Away from the roaring falls, crammed with phone-wielding tourists in the warm April sun, residents describe resentment at how much money is spent on the new arrivals.
'I wish the government was paying for three meals for my family,' said a hotel worker, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Business owners have their own worries.
Mr Diodati tells the story of a Brazilian steakhouse that went through a $7 million makeover, only for the owner to realise that the city's hotels were filled with people who were not going to be spending money on slap-up dinners.
Elizabeth Bilotta, owner of the Hair Gallery salon, said she had lost hundreds of dollars from missed appointments.
'When I have called them they just say they are a refugee as if that makes it OK,' she said.
'These are four-hour appointments, $200 to $300. I still have to pay my staff.'
There are upsides for a city where 40,000 people are directly dependent on tourism. Asylum seekers are allowed to work while they wait for their case to be decided, providing a steady stream of entry level labour for the city's service industries.
But that dependence on tourism brings other worries for Mr Dionati, who jokes that he could throw a ball from his office and hit the US border in the middle of the Niagara River: just what will Mr Trump do or say next?
He was once a fan of the American president, seeing him as the sort of can-do businessman who would bring a fresh approach to politics. Now. like the rest of the country, he is dealing with the fallout from Mr Trump's repeated attacks on Canada, falsely accusing it of allowing deadly fentanyl to cross the border and describing a trade deficit as a $200 billion subsidy.
Tourism traffic travelling from Canada across the bridge into the US has already fallen by a quarter. Any drop in travellers coming the other way, reducing the number of big-spending Americans visiting his city, could have a devastating effect.
'You're always waiting for what's next,' Mr Dionati said. 'He's so mercurial, so unpredictable. You never know what's going to come out of his mouth.'