Thousands of refugee claims from asylum seekers remain unprocessed: federal immigration officials

One of the few articles with more detailed numbers, showing the relatively small number of claims that have been processed to date compared to the number of asylum seeks (13,000):

Only 300 refugee claims filed by the thousands of asylum seekers flowing across the Canadian border in Quebec in recent months have been processed by the federal tribunal that decides who gets refugee status, officials told the House Immigration and Citizenship Committee on Tuesday.

Only half of those 300 asylum seekers have been granted refugee status, representatives from the federal Immigration and Refugee Board revealed in testimony to the committee.

The surge in asylum seekers crossing into Canada slowed in the first half of September; IRB officials told the committee that from Sept. 1-17 about 2,000 asylum claims were filed from those who illegally entered Canada, a drop from the more than 8,000 claims made in July and August.

Asylum seekers who illegally entered Canada have filed roughly 13,000 refugee claims this year, according to officials from the IRB, which is responsible for assessing the validity of refugee claims.

In response to a question about why it had only processed 300 of the claims so far, IRB spokesperson Anna Pape wrote in a written statement to The Hill Times that it was “based on the readiness of the claims to proceed to a hearing and our capacity to hear them.”

“Although the [Refugee Protection Division] makes every effort to be as efficient as possible in it’s scheduling it can sometimes be faced with cases that cannot proceed for reasons outside of its control,” Ms. Pape wrote, referring to the division of IRB tasked with handling the refugee claimants.

Many of the recent asylum seekers have crossed the southern Quebec border, leaving the United States to avoid a possible deportation from there to another country, including 1,928 Haitians this year, according to the IRB.

President Donald Trump announced an extension in May to the temporary protection status given to Haitian nationals in the U.S. after the island nation’s horrific 2010 earthquake, but only until January 2018.

A large number of refugees arriving in Quebec are also from Colombia and Burundi, while many were born in the United States, according to the IRB. Around 60 per cent of Quebec border crossers were male, and 20 per cent were children, with a sizeable number of families arriving together.

Source: Thousands of refugee claims from asylum seekers remain unprocessed: federal immigration officials – The Hill Times – The Hill Times