Canada has been blocking border crossings and turning away foreigners seeking visas in what may be an attempt to appease voters ahead of the country’s 2025 elections — while Prime Minister Trudeau has the lowest approval ratings of his career.

July saw the North American country’s Border Services Agency deny entry to 5,853 foreign travelers, the highest such number of refusals since at least 2019, Reuters reports. 

Overall, the governmental agency has seen a 20 percent increase in 2024 so far, turning away an average of nearly 4,000 people each month.

Officials with the Canada Border Services Agency said the increase is not due to any new policies and that the refusals at their crossings have always been on a case-by-case basis.

“The CBSA’s role, policy, and practice has always been to assess the admissibility of persons coming to Canada. This has not changed,” the agency said in a statement.

The agency also increased its denial of visitor visas, with nearly 300 holders deemed inadmissible in July 2024, breaking the previous record in January 2019, according to the data obtained by Reuters.

The rise of rejections comes as Prime Minister Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada are dealing with low approval ratings ahead of the country’s 2025 elections.

Mr. Trudeau once had the second-highest approval ratings in the country’s history, at 65 percent, back in September 2016, but they have sharply dropped over the past eight years to 28 percent. A recent CTV survey from July found that the public considered him to be the worst Canadian Prime Minister in the past 55 years.

The possible shift in Canada’s immigration policy stems from growing sentiment throughout the country that blames migrants for driving a housing shortage, a high cost of living, and migrants being granted entry into the country at an excessive rate.  

A survey conducted this summer found that 60 percent of those who responded believe too many immigrants are entering Canada. Many Canadians also said they would vote for a candidate who can promise lower levels of immigration, according to Foreign Policy.

“Canadians want a system that is not out of control,” Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship, Marc Miller, said in an August Interview with Reuters. “The era of uncapped programs to come into this country is quickly coming to an end.”

“This is a big shift.”