Calls emerge for U.S. refugee status as group helps Jewish families flee Canada

OTTAWA — A former Ontario man and a Conservative U.S. think tank are encouraging the Trump administration to offer refugee status to Jewish Canadians who feel threatened by rising antisemitism here.

“With the urgency around the challenges and the inaction we see in Canada, an asylum pathway makes sense,” said Joe Roberts, the executive director of Jewish Tulsa, a group that has helped welcome Jews like himself to the Oklahoma city.

Roberts said thousands of Canadian Jews are seeking to escape constant fear over the firebombing of Jewish schools, temples and businesses.

“It’s a pan-Canadian problem,” he said. “The discourse has changed fundamentally.”

Roberts said he grew up in Ohio and moved with his Canadian wife to Ontario for job opportunities in 2016. He said he left the U.S. in part because he feared democratic backsliding under President Donald Trump.

They settled in Cobourg, Ont., an hour outside Toronto. He said it was a good fit until the fall 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, which prompted Israel to bombard the Gaza Strip.

He said he saw antisemitic graffiti popping up in his local park, far from the tense protests in Toronto. Roberts said he felt nervous about putting his child in kindergarten in a country where acts of antisemitic hate seem commonplace.

His family moved to Tulsa two years ago after being approached by a group that is trying to build the city’s Jewish presence. The group, Tulsa Tomorrow, provides guided visits and logistical help to Jewish people who want to move there — and runs a program specifically for Canadians.

Roberts said Tulsa Tomorrow has received inquiries from 800 to 900 Jewish Canadian families representing roughly 2,000 people who are considering leaving Canada. They are eligible for financial help from the group he helps to run, Jewish Tulsa.

Most of the Canadians able to make such a move either qualify for a visa under the North American trade agreement CUSMA or are eligible for American citizenship through family or marriage ties, Roberts said.

Antisemitism is also a growing problem in the U.S., as the Trump administration has openly admitted.

The American Jewish Committee’s report for 2025 called it “one of the most violent years against American Jews in recent history” and noted that nearly half of Jews under the age of 30 said they had been personally targeted by antisemitism.

Roberts said the U.S. should provide an immigration pathway for Jews in Canada who are at risk and can demonstrate their government is not doing enough to protect them. He said everyone would prefer to see Canadian authorities do more to stop acts of anti-Jewish hate.

The Trump administration has restricted asylum claims but made an exceptional — and highly controversial — exception by creating a resettlement program for Afrikaner people from South Africa.

“When a country — whether it’s a foreign dictatorship or an ally — is unwilling to take care of the challenges of a minority group, it’s one of the promises of America to extend a hand and provide a pathway,” Roberts said.

The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, made the same case in a commentary last month.

The think tank argued the Trump administration “should offer asylum to Canadian Jews who, per U.S. law, have a credible fear of persecution on account of their faith or ethnicity.”

The commentary noted a decision by Montreal cardiac surgeon Emmanuel Moss to leave for Atlanta this fall. Moss said in June he was leaving the city where he was raised, citing provincial underfunding of health care and an inadequate response to rising antisemitism.

In an interview, Trump’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, said Washington is not currently looking at resettling Canadian Jews.

“We weigh everything, but we would hope that the (Canadian) government would step in to make sure that their Canadian Jewish citizens feel safe in Canada,” he said on July 28 during a visit to Ottawa.

“I’m here to ask the Canadian government to do a better job to protect their Jewish citizens. I’m not wading into what we will do in the future.”

Roberts said that while he has concerns about how Trump is governing the U.S. in his second term, he believes Washington has done more to tackle antisemitism by prosecuting hate and holding universities to account.

“There’s been a serious effort by this government to address it, where I don’t think we’ve seen that kind of action from the federal government in Canada,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 5, 2026.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press