Josh Dehaas: Government should provide information on fate of failed asylum seekers

Valid points raised by Dehaas and Richard Kurland:

So what’s the truth? Are fake refugees really being encouraged to cross into Canada where they can sign up for welfare or a work permit, knowing they can ride off the backs of Canadian taxpayers for months or years? Or, as the Liberals make it sound, will they be put on a plane and sent packing?

The government is failing to provide basic answers

The truth is, we don’t know. It’s difficult to answer these types of questions because the government won’t provide basic answers about what’s happened to failed asylum seekers. Their failure to provide this data leaves Canadians to fill in the blanks. That’s dangerous, because it could lead to irrational public demands to close the door.

Right now, what little the government does report about failed asylum seekers doesn’t instil confidence. The Canada Border Services Agency’s goal in the 2015-16 fiscal year was to remove 80 per cent of failed asylum seekers within a year of a rejection of their claim, including appeals. In fact, they managed to remove just 47 per cent. In 2016-17 (year ended March 31), CBSA claims they did better, at 63 per cent. Either way, these figures suggest a large number of failed asylum seekers have decided to stick around indefinitely.

One would assume CBSA knows where they are and is trying to track them down. But neither Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale nor the the CBSA’s Jacques Cloutier would answer that question when it was put to them in a parliamentary committee in October by Conservative MP Larry Maguire.

The CBSA will not say how many warrants have been issued

One might also assume there are warrants out for their arrests; they’re supposed to be issued whenever removal orders come into effect. But the CBSA won’t say how many warrants there are. They did tell the Toronto Sun in March that there were 44,773 outstanding warrants for individuals who are supposed to be deported, but claimed they couldn’t say how many were failed refugees.

Richard Kurland, a veteran immigration lawyer, says he has been asking the CBSA for years to release data showing how many people have been removed, which countries they’re from, and how many warrants are active. Last year, he used the Access to Information Act to try to get details out of the CBSA, but the response arrived approximately nine months later and incomplete. It showed that there were 9,724 failed refugee claimants in the “removals working inventory” in September 2016, but didn’t really answer his questions.

“CBSA is just not providing basic reporting information, even though it’s instantly accessible literally at the push of a button,” Kurland says. Without such details, he adds, “it’s hard for us to have an intelligent, evidence-based discussion on policy.”

How are we supposed to get ahead of new challenges without basic information?

Kurland, for the record, says he believes most asylum seekers are coming here “in good faith” and that, even if they’re rejected, most are willing to self-deport. He also believes that the refugee system is working well compared to a decade ago when he says there were large numbers of illegitimate asylum seekers from eastern Europe coming to Canada to take advantage of our generous social assistance. Back then, he says, the wait for a refugee hearing was as long as four years, with another two or three for appeals. The Conservative fixed that problem, in part by speeding up the process for people from countries that don’t normally produce legitimate refugees.

But how are we supposed to get ahead of new challenges with the system, if we can’t even access the numbers needed to assess how well the CBSA is doing its job?

The government shouldn’t be leaving Canadians to fill in the blanks, because it will only generate suspicion. The people who will suffer most if Canadians lose faith in our immigration system are legitimate refugees.

via Josh Dehaas: Government should provide information on fate of failed asylum seekers | National Post