The Montreal Gazette reports that Canada will offer incentives to persuade rejected refugee claimants to leave the country.  The measure is part of a comprehensive overhaul designed to speed up the refugee-determination process, mired in a 60,000-person backlog.  Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said “We’re going to try to use carrots instead of sticks,” and said the Canadian government would provide allowances of up to $2,000 to asylum-seekers whose claims are rejected.

The Canadian government hopes to decrease the average departure time for failed refugee claimants from 4.5 years to two years.  Mr. Kenny states that the new measure would help prevent fraud: “The longer the queue, the more false claimants come,” he said.

Similar programs in Britain and Australia have dramatically improved compliance with deportation orders, said Kenney, who acknowledged he was initially skeptical about subsidizing rejected refugee claimants.

Whether or not a similar plan would work in the United States, it seems unlikely that there exists the political will to pay rejected asylum seekers to leave our country, even if this might be cheaper than rounding people up and deporting them.