Canada’s immigration minister says he plans to propose measures to reform the country’s refugee system that could expedite the rejection of cases deemed to have little chance of success.
Experts and advocates have warned that this could violate asylum seekers’ right to due process and could be challenged in court.
“We’re going to propose further measures. We want to reform the system. It’s not working the way it should.” Immigration Minister Mark Miller told a parliamentary committee on Monday.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to cut immigration over the next two years, even as his party trails in opinion polls and Canadians surveyed publicly say support for new immigrants is declining. He has promised to reduce Canada’s population and is changing the government’s welcoming stance on immigration.
The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, an independent adjudication body for refugee claims, says it is accepting applications from “people who have an increasingly diminished desire to remain in Canada and who are being encouraged to make refugee claims that they should not have the ability to make.” He said he is considering it. ” Miller added.
In recent months, Canada has seen record numbers of asylum applications. Although the monthly total number of claims decreased from about 20,000 in July to about 17,400 in October, the number of pending insurance claims hit a record high of more than 260,000 last month.
According to Statistics Canada, more than 265,000 non-permanent residents came to Canada in the second quarter of 2024.
Thousands of those asylum applications were made by international students, and Miller questions their authenticity.
One of the aims of the reforms is that people who had planned to study internationally as a path to permanent residence in Canada now have to apply for asylum as a last resort to remain in Canada, now that that path has been blocked by the new rules. It will prevent you from doing so. Asylum applications were on the rise even before the new rules took effect.
“The number of international students applying for asylum is increasing, but I think there is little hope given their circumstances,” Miller said.
“Is there anything we can do to make it more streamlined? I encourage you to follow along in the coming weeks as we propose further amendments to our immigration and asylum systems.”
Miller did not say what those changes would be. He is “exploring options related to asylum reform,” spokeswoman Rene LeBlanc Proctor wrote in an email Tuesday.
But Audrey Macklin, a law professor and human rights commissioner at the University of Toronto, said rapid refugee denials are likely to face legal challenges on the grounds that they “prevent” procedural fairness.
“You cannot (effectively) say, ‘We think this is a ‘bogus’ claim, so we will not participate in the hearing,'” she wrote in an email Tuesday.
Immigration advocates have called for increased resources at the Immigration and Refugee Board so it can process more applications faster, and that applications from countries with higher acceptance rates can be processed more quickly because they are more likely to be successful. claims to be sexual.
