More refugee claimants get 2nd chance with new appeal process

Interesting:

Under the old system of judicial review, only about seven per cent of rejected claimants were granted leave to appeal their cases to the Federal Court. That means the number of people who are now getting a chance at an appeal has nearly tripled.

“They’re doing a better job, a much better job than the previous federal court process,” said Peter Showler, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa and a former chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board. “[But] that’s because that process was so drastically limited.”

Under the old system, the standard for overturning a decision was too narrow, Showler argued. Federal Court judges could only consider whether the decision reached by the refugee board was “reasonable” in law. That filter, he said, prevented many legitimate claims from being reviewed.

“One way of seeing it is the Refugee Appeal Division is certainly doing a better job of identifying mistakes than the federal court,” he said.

“Another way of seeing this is we’ve had 10 years of lack of justice in this country where claimants were incorrectly refused and we did not catch those mistakes.”

CBC News asked officials in Immigration Minister Chris Alexanders office to comment on the new figures. His office did not immediately respond.

But other experts say that while the numbers are encouraging, there are still far too many restrictions on who gets to appeal their case.

Refugee lawyer Lorne Waldman noted that claimants from so-called safe countries like Hungary and Mexico are barred from appealing their cases, as are claimants who arrive and lodge a refugee claim at the U.S. border.

The Government could tout this as evidence that refugee reform both tightened the system and made it more fair than the previous Federal Court process.

But that might undermine their overall anti-fraud and misrepresentation messaging.

More refugee claimants get 2nd chance with new appeal process – Politics – CBC News.