Since late last month, Toronto resident Hazat Wahriz has been approached by Afghan friends and acquaintances in the U.S. desperately asking about refuge in Canada.

With Washington pausing and reviewing the entire asylum system and immigration processing of applicants from certain countries including Afghanistan, he said his compatriots south of the border are fearful of losing their already precarious status and being deported to the embrace of the Taliban.

“Just imagine you belong to a community that is inadmissible there and is not welcome,” said Wahriz, a former university professor and diplomat in Afghanistan, who came to Canada for asylum in 2013 and is a citizen. “Now the U.S. is not a safe country for them. Deportation for most of these people is going to be a sentence to death.

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