LOS ANGELES, Feb 15: The miseries of Pakistanis along the US-Canada border are increasing each day with hundreds trying to move out from the United States.

Already, scores of Pakistanis are living in camps of the Salvation Army along the border, waiting to find out if there is a future for them in Canada.

Overwhelmed Canadian officials have been unable to process the immigrants right away, leaving them in limbo and, some say, in danger of being arrested when they go back from no-man’s land to the US.

On some days, the applicants overwhelmed the staff at the Canadian port of entry in Lacolle, Quebec, about 64 kilometres northwest of Burlington, Canadian immigration spokesman Rene Mercier said.

“When we have too many people showing up on a given day, we have no facilities at the port of entry to accommodate them, so we ask them to return to the US” and come back later for an appointment, the official said.

Patrick Giantonio of Vermont Refugee Assistance said up to 40 detainees have been held at the Oneida County Jail in Utica, New York, in the last two weeks. INS spokeswoman Amy Otten would not confirm or deny that. “We don’t discuss where we’re detaining people,” she said. “We don’t give out any numbers.”

Joung-ah Ghedini, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commission for Refugees, says the agency is drafting a letter to US and Canadian immigration authorities with suggestions for ways to ease the problem.

Anne Wilson, vice-president of the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said her group had been inundated with calls from frightened Arabs and Muslims seeking guidance.

She said she understood the motivation behind the stepped-up US immigration enforcement since the Sept 11 attacks. But wholesale crackdowns were likely to hurt law enforcement personnel’s efforts to learn more about those seeking to harm the US.

“To get that intelligence, you need to make friends, not enemies,” she said.