Australia: Coalition’s test likely to disadvantage those who need citizenship most | The Guardian

2017/06/16 Leave a comment

As the Australian government proceeds with its changes, the same issues raised by refugee advocates as in C-24:

Citizenship applicants will need to demonstrate a higher level of English proficiency if the government’s proposed changes to the Australian citizenship test go ahead.

Applicants will be required to reach the equivalent of Band 6 proficiency of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).

To achieve Band 6, applicants must correctly answer 30 out of 40 questions in the reading paper, 23 out of 40 in the listening paper and the writing paper rewards language used “accurately and appropriately”. If a candidate’s writing has “frequent” inaccuracies in grammar and spelling, they cannot achieve Band 6.

Success in IELTS requires proficiency in both the English language and also understanding how to take – and pass – a test. The proposed changes will then make it harder for people with fragmented educational backgrounds to become citizens, such as many refugees.

How do the tests now work?

The current citizenship test consists of 20 multiple choice questions in English that ask about Australia’s political system, history and citizen responsibilities.

While the test does not require demonstration of English proficiency per se, it acts as an indirect assessment of language.

For example, the question “Which official symbol of Australia identifies commonwealth property?” demonstrates the level of linguistic complexity required.

The IELTS test is commonly taken for immigration purposes as a requirement for certain visa categories; however, the designer of the IELTS argues that it was never designed for this purpose. Researchers have argued that the growing strength of English as the language of politics and economics has resulted in its widespread use for immigration purposes.

Impact of proposed changes

English is undoubtedly important for participation in society but deciding citizenship based on a high-stakes language test could further marginalise community members, such as people with refugee backgrounds who have the greatest need for citizenship yet lack the formal educational background to navigate such tests.

The Refugee Council of Australia argues that adults with refugee backgrounds will be hardest hit by the proposed language test.

Data shows that refugees are both more likely to apply for citizenship and twice as likely as other migrant groups to have to retake the test.

Mismatched proficiency expectations

The adult migrant English program, where many adult refugees access English learning upon arrival, expects only a “functional” level of language proficiency.

For many adult refugees – who have minimal first language literacy, fragmented educational experiences and limited opportunities to gain feedback on their written English – “competency” may be prohibitive to gaining citizenship. This is also more likely to impact refugee women, who are less likely to have had formal schooling and more likely to assume caring duties.

Bar too high?

The challenges faced in resettlement, such as pressures of work and financial responsibilities to extended family, often combine to make learning a language difficult and, by extension, prevent refugees from completing the citizenship test.

Similar patterns are evident with the IELTS. Nearly half of Arabic speakers who took the IELTS in 2015 scored lower than Band 6.

There are a number of questions to clarify regarding the proposed language proficiency test:

  • Will those dealing with trauma-related experiences gain exemption from a high-stakes, time-pressured examination?
  • What support will be provided to help applicants study for the test?
  • Will financially disadvantaged members of the community be expected to pay for classes and materials to prepare for the citizenship test?
  • The IELTS test costs $330, with no subsidies available. Will the IELTS-based citizenship/language test attract similar fees?

There are also questions about the fairness of requiring applicants to demonstrate a specific type and level of English under examination conditions that is not required of all citizens. Those born in Australia are not required to pass an academic test of language to retain their citizenship.

Recognising diversity of experiences

There are a few things the government should consider before introducing a language test:

1. Community consultation is essential. Input from community/migrant groups, educators and language assessment specialists will ensure that the test functions as a valid evaluation of progression towards English language proficiency. The government is now calling for submissionsrelated to the new citizenship test.

2. Design the test to value different forms and varieties of English that demonstrate progression in learning rather than adherence to prescriptive standards.

3. Provide educational opportunities that build on existing linguistic strengths that help people to prepare for the test.

Equating a particular type of language proficiency with a commitment to Australian citizenship is a complex and ideologically loaded notion. The government must engage in careful consideration before potentially further disadvantaging those most in need of citizenship.

Source: Coalition’s test likely to disadvantage those who need citizenship most | Sally Baker and Rachel Burke | Australia news | The Guardian

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ICYMI: The real tragedy of Mavis Otuteye’s death: it didn’t have to happen

2017/06/06 Leave a comment

Jason Markusoff argues that the safe-third country agreement should not be blamed for Otuteye’s death along with the need for better and more consistent information:

It isn’t clear if Otuteye was actually seeking to make a refugee claim once she encountered authorities in Manitoba; nor are the grounds she might have cited in seeking protection from persecution back home in Ghana. Most migrants crossing into Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia on foot aren’t seeking temporary visits, nor would they normally be granted them–they bid for refugee status, and if they lose, they face deportation to their home countries.

As the initial reports rolled in about a Ghanaian dying during a foot journey to Canada, immigration experts quickly decried the safe country agreement as the culprit. It’s the same problem they’ve cited throughout this upswing in irregular border crossing. However, this case may not point so surely to the folly of the U.S.-Canada agreement, but rather the merits of its compassionate exemptions: if a migrant is looking to be reunited with family, he or she is granted safe passage into Canada.

It also highlights problems in how information flows to prospective refugees. The Citizenship and Immigration Canada website explains this exemption to the safe country agreement. According to the National Post, Otuteye kept her border plans largely a secret, meaning few people in the woman’s orbit had the chance to help her identify her options. Often, immigrant communities rely on word of mouth or message boards to figure out how to traverse boundaries and reach safety. Immigration lawyers in Canada often get called, but are barred from offering counsel to would-be border-hoppers. Sometimes there is paranoia that a phone call to the wrong person can lead to an immigration officer’s roundup in the U.S.; this has become a bigger fear in the Trump era than before.

Perhaps, had the safe third country agreement never been in place, nobody would have felt the need to make their way into Canada by crossing ditches and fields, and nobody would have created a familiar path that Otuteye apparently felt compelled to follow. Even without this tragic case, there are good reasons experts cite to scrap the deal–the very risk of further deaths still exists among legitimate asylum-seekers, who genuinely have no alternative way of reaching Canada. But this tragic story does not, on its own, represent the straw that finally fells this problematic agreement.

Source: The real tragedy of Mavis Otuteye’s death: it didn’t have to happen – Macleans.ca

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Italy’s casual racism is out of place in town where migrants are helping economy

2017/05/24 Leave a comment

Two examples, one bad, one good:

It is an aging country with towns and villages emptying of their young, and a country where racism is never far below the surface. When it explodes, it is often tolerated.

It is also a country with tens of thousands of potential new citizens sitting on its doorstep. With a few exceptions, however, Italy is very reluctant to try to integrate them.

Sulley Muntari has been around. He’s 32 and has played for several top Italian teams as well as teams in Britain. He’s also played for Ghana’s national team 84 times.

He knows how the game is played in Italy, he knows the corrosive power of fans called “ultras” and their penchant for racist abuse. But in early May he snapped. He had appealed to the referee to do something about the unrelenting chants. The referee did nothing. So Muntari left the game.

Sulley Muntari — Italian soccer player

Sulley Muntari of Pescara remonstrates with football fans during a Serie A match April 30 in Cagliari, Italy. (Enrico Locci/Getty)

For this, the Italian soccer federation suspended him for a further game. It said the abuse was minor, coming from a minority of just 10 or 15 fans.

Meanwhile, in the mountains of the south, the town council of Sant’Alessio rents out eight apartments which house 35 migrants — an Iraqi Kurdish family, and people from Nigeria, Mali and Senegal.

The town gets up to 45 euros ($70 Cdn) a day for each migrant from the national government to house, feed and help train them. There are vocational classes and legal and medical aid.

The mission began as humanitarian aid, Mayor Stephano Calabro said. “But there are significant economic benefits, too.”

The subsidies are helping to keep the town’s dying shops and services alive.

Most migrants aren’t so lucky. Over the years, people on the southern island of Lampedusa have worked heroically to rescue and welcome thousands of new arrivals who risked their lives in the sea crossing.

But now at least 170,000 migrants languish in makeshift government camps, waiting for months, even years, while their asylum requests work their way through the slow, tortuous, complicated bureaucratic process.

Source: Italy’s casual racism is out of place in town where migrants are helping economy – World – CBC News

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Précarité des jeunes migrants: Ottawa et Québec se font rassurants

2017/05/23 Leave a comment

Interesting discussion regarding young refugees and the degree to which settlement and related services are adequately meeting their needs:

Tandis que l’organisme Dans la rue constate un nombre grandissant de jeunes nouveaux arrivants en situation précaire, les autorités se font rassurantes quant à l’intégration des immigrants, réfugiés et sans-papiers au

Tandis que l’organisme Dans la rue constate un nombre grandissant de jeunes nouveaux arrivants en situation précaire, les autorités se font rassurantes quant à l’intégration des immigrants, réfugiés et sans-papiers au Canada.

Réunies vendredi à l’occasion d’une soirée-bénéfice pour l’organisme et son nouveau partenariat avec le Haut-commissariat des Nations unies pour les réfugiés (HCR), la ministre fédérale du Développement international, Marie-Claude Bibeau, et la ministre provinciale de l’Immigration, Kathleen Weil, ont surtout imputé ces cas «qui tombent entre les mailles du filet» à des traumatismes vécus par certains demandeurs d’asile dans leur pays d’origine.

La ministre Weil dresse un portrait élogieux de la prise en charge des nouveaux arrivants par le gouvernement, puis par le milieu communautaire et la société civile.

En entrevue avec La Presse canadienne, Marie-Claude Bibeau a pour sa part tenu à souligner qu’avec quelque 46 700 réfugiés réinstallés l’an dernier, le Canada n’en accueille qu’un nombre «relativement modeste».

«J’ai été au Liban et en Jordanie où, dans certaines villes, la population a doublé, a-t-elle illustré. Vous imaginez la pression que ça vient mettre sur les services publics?»

Au-delà de la compassion, l’aide humanitaire relève d’un «enjeu de paix et de sécurité mondiale», a avancé la ministre, dont les propres parents avaient accueilli une famille de Vietnamiens à l’époque de la vague de «boat people».

Mme Bibeau rétorque en outre à ceux qui remettent en question l’utilité de l’aide humanitaire que celle-ci permet d’éviter que des conflits prennent de l’ampleur et exacerbent la crise des migrants.

La ministre Weil renchérit qu’il s’agit d’un enjeu qu’il faut approcher «en amont comme en aval».

Quant aux sans-papiers – qu’elle aborde comme un dossier totalement distinct -, Mme Weil assure qu’on ne leur bloque pas totalement l’accès aux réseaux de la santé et de l’éducation.

«Mais c’est un peu normal qu’il y ait des gens qui tombent entre deux chaises», croit-elle.

«Arriver en tant que réfugié dans un nouveau pays est toujours une gageure», fait valoir Jean-Nicolas Beuze, de HCR Canada.

Si certains parviennent à tirer profit des services sociaux ou bénéficient déjà d’un réseau de proches, d’autres se heurtent à la barrière de la langue et parfois à un puissant choc culturel, a-t-il poursuivi.

M. Beuze souligne également la précarité économique de bon nombre de réfugiés, tandis que, globalement, la moitié d’entre eux sont en fait des mineurs.

«Les gens arrivent sans un sou en poche, surtout quand ils se sont déplacés à travers le monde. Ils ont souvent dépensé toutes leurs économies», a ajouté M. Beuze.

Le représentant de HCR au Canada félicite lui aussi le gouvernement québécois pour son système qu’il juge «très solidaire vis-à-vis les nouveaux arrivants».

Dans le cadre du partenariat avec Dans la rue, l’agence onusienne combinera son expertise au soutien psychosocial apporté par l’organisme qui vient en aide aux jeunes en situation d’itinérance ou de précarité. Cette association entre «un organisme qui oeuvre au coin de la rue et un autre, à l’autre bout du monde», dans les mots de Julien Nepveu-Villeneuve, de l’Association du jeune Montréal, vise à améliorer les interventions auprès des nouveaux arrivants, comme les cinquante jeunes qui ont fait appel à Dans la rue l’an dernier seulement.

La directrice générale de Dans la rue, Cécile Arbaud, fait état de la grande complexité des cas de certains jeunes qui ne parlent parfois ni français ni anglais, et qui ne sont pas dotés des papiers d’identité nécessaires pour avoir droit à l’aide sociale ou trouver un logement.

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Former Tory government’s refugee reforms get failing grade

2017/05/19 Leave a comment

Good evidence-based analysis but would have been helpful to have the pre-changes data as well:

Five years after Ottawa rolled out controversial reforms to build a “faster and fairer” asylum system, also meant to boot out failed refugees quickly, the verdict is in.

Despite the highly-touted changes made by the former Conservative government in 2012, the revamped refugee system has failed to hear claims within tight statutory processing timelines or get rid of the backlog, reports a new study released by the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies.

“The aim of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act was to make the system faster, fairer and more cost effective,” said Ryerson University criminology professor Idil Atak, who co-wrote the review with colleague Graham Hudson at Ryerson and University of Ottawa professor Delphine Nakache.

“But the new system is not faster. It is not fairer. It is not more cost-effective.”

To restore the asylum system’s “integrity,” then Immigration Minister Jason Kenney introduced substantive changes to the process, including truncated timelines in asylum claims’ processing. Those who claim asylum at a port of entry are given 15 days, not the 28 days that applied prior to that, to submit the form setting out the basis of their claim.

For most claimants, refugee hearings are supposed to be held no later than 60 days after the claim is referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board, while those from the government-designated list of “safe” countries will be heard as quickly as within 30 days.

The government did respond to advocates’ demands by establishing a tribunal to hear appeals by applicants whose claims have been rejected.

However, it also introduced a one-year bar to prevent failed refugees from having a pre-removal risk assessment or applying permanent residence under humanitarian considerations to delay deportation.

The researchers examined the system’s performance against its policy goals. They did this based on government data from the refugee board, immigration department, border service officials and the RCMP, and on 47 interviews with officials from those agencies and others.

Despite the drop in the volume of asylum claims by half over the course of one year, from 20,427 in 2012 to 10,322 in 2013, only 55 per cent of the safe-country claims met the 30-day target, compared to seven out of 10 claims from non-safe countries.

According to the refugee board, 30 per cent of asylum hearings had to be rescheduled in 2015, mostly due to lack of time. One-third of the appeals at the refugee appeals tribunal also failed to deliver a decision within the 90-day limit; on average, appeals cases were finalized 44 days beyond the target.

“The administration’s priority was to schedule the initial (refugee) hearings for new asylum applications,” said the 50-page study. “As a result, secondary intake of claims, i.e. claims returned by the appeals tribunal or Federal court, remained unresolved for a period of time.”

There were more than 5,000 so-called “legacy cases,” which were filed before the new system came into effect in 2012, that were languishing in the system as of 2016, said Atak, adding that the refugee backlog has already reached the number that applied before the 2012 reform.

With a spike in the number of irregular land-border crossings via the United States, Canada this year has already received a total of 12,040 claims up to the end of April.

If the trend continues, it could reach 36,000 cases in 2017.

Refugee advocates have called on the government to do away with the two-tier system based on where claimants come from and the unrealistic timelines for hearings and appeals.

Mario Dion, the refugee board chair, has called on the Liberal government both for more resources and to ease the restrictive process.

The Tories established the one-year bar to pre-removal risk assessments and humanitarian consideration for failed refugees because of the target to kick them out of Canada within one year.

However, the study found only one-third of failed claimants were removed from Canada within 12 months due to many obstacles.

These include lack of co-operation by the home country, inability to locate the individuals and the person’s fitness to travel.

The reforms did not come cheap, said the study; the Tory government allocated a total of $324 million on implementation over five years.

The removal costs almost doubled to $43 million after the reforms, while the number of people deported from Canada dropped from 13,869 in 2012 to 7,852 in 2014, according to the latest data available to the researchers.

Source: Former Tory government’s refugee reforms get failing grade | Toronto Star

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Liberals postpone indefinitely overhaul of asylum claim system

2017/05/17 Leave a comment

Interesting. An overhaul beyond the original campaign promise of an expert panel to determine which countries should be considered as safe would be complex by itself, not to mention the politics involved:

A Liberal election promise to overhaul the way asylum claims are handled has been postponed indefinitely despite rising numbers of people seeking refuge in Canada putting the system at risk, The Canadian Press has learned.

One of the options on the table, multiple sources have told The Canadian Press, is rejigging the historic Immigration and Refugee Board, and giving some of its authority over to the Immigration Department itself.

But those advocating for the government to do something before backlogs threaten the integrity of the system say they are running up against a Liberal government seeming to have lost interest in spending any more money or political capital to help asylum seekers.

The starting point is the designated country of origins system, which determines how fast asylum claims are heard based on where they are from – a system that should, in theory, help weed out unfounded claims faster.

Internal evaluations have shown that hasn’t quite worked, and the system has drawn the ire of refugee advocates for creating a two-tier approach that includes unworkable timelines for hearing cases and their appeals. Elements of the program have already been struck down by the Federal Court.

The Liberals had been on the cusp of doing away with it, going even farther than their original promise to use an expert panel to determine which countries belonged on that list.

But a planned January roll-out was postponed after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump and the subsequent Liberal cabinet shuffle that saw a replacement of the federal immigration minister.

Then in March, as the issue of illegal border crossers dominated global headlines and Question Period, plans to repeal the designated-country-of-origin scheme were scrapped again, sources said.

They haven’t been rescheduled, even as the IRB itself has been among those saying the system needs to go as a way to ease the pressure.

“It would simplify our life from a case management point of view,” chairperson Mario Dion said in an interview with The Canadian Press in March.

“I don’t have a political view.”

The Liberals do, observers said.

When they came into power and moved to make good on a promise to resettle 25,000 Syrians, the government believed it had broad public support for refugees, said immigration lawyer and refugee advocate Lorne Waldman.

Things have changed.

“The concern at the centre is that support has dissipated significantly because of a series of factors, the most important one being the emergence of Donald Trump,” he said.

“And I think the concern is amplified by the Conservative leadership race where you have many of the candidates taking a very anti-immigrant posturing in their campaign.”

Source: Liberals postpone indefinitely overhaul of asylum claim system – Macleans.ca

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Réfugiés syriens: l’impact sur la minorité francophone au Canada a été ignoré

2017/05/15 Leave a comment

In the context of the push to meet the target and deadline, understandable oversight:

Le gouvernement fédéral n’a pas tenu compte de l’impact de la réinstallation des réfugiés syriens sur les communautés francophones en situation minoritaire, reproche le Commissariat aux langues officielles (CLO).

La commissaire par intérim, Ghislaine Saikaley, conclut que le ministère de l’Immigration, des réfugiés et de la citoyenneté (MIRC) a contrevenu à certaines de ses obligations en matière de bilinguisme en réinstallant au pays ces milliers de migrants qui ont fui la guerre civile.

Car tout au long du processus, le ministère «n’a jamais cherché à connaître» les besoins des communautés francophones en situation minoritaire, tranche la commissaire dans un rapport d’enquête préliminaire de 12 pages obtenu par La Presse canadienne.

Or, en vertu de la Loi sur les langues officielles, qui a un statut quasi-constitutionnel, le fédéral «a l’obligation de prendre des mesures positives de façon proactive» afin d’appuyer ces communautés et d’agir de façon à ne pas nuire à leur «développement» et leur «épanouissement», est-il écrit.

Des communautés francophones en situation minoritaire ont bien tenté d’ouvrir leurs portes à certains de ces réfugiés syriens parrainés par le gouvernement, et dont «approximativement 95 % ne parlaient ni français ni anglais à leur arrivée au Canada».

Mais ce fut en vain. «Sur les 39 propositions reçues à l’hiver 2016, huit ont été soumises par des organismes d’établissement francophones, mais aucune de celles-ci n’a été retenue», a noté la commissaire Saikaley.

Pour le porte-parole du Nouveau Parti démocratique (NPD) en matière de langues officielles, François Choquette, «c’est une occasion manquée, une occasion ratée». Car c’est par l’immigration que passe – à tout le moins en partie – la survie des communautés francophones minoritaires.

Même son de cloche du côté de la présidente de la Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne (FCFA), Sylviane Lanthier, qui rappelle que le gouvernement fédéral a souvent raté la cible de 4,4 % en matière d’immigration francophone hors Québec.

«Les communautés ont peu bénéficié de l’immigration, a-t-elle souligné en entrevue téléphonique. C’est important que le gouvernement fédéral maximise les effets positifs potentiels de l’accueil des réfugiés dans nos communautés.»

Car la vitalité de ces milieux «repose beaucoup, et de plus en plus, sur l’accueil et l’intégration des nouveaux arrivants, y compris des réfugiés qui se réinstallent au Canada», a fait valoir Mme Lanthier.

Les représentants du MIRC ont bien plaidé auprès du CLO qu’il y avait urgence d’agir en raison de la promesse du gouvernement libéral d’accueillir 25 000 réfugiés en l’espace de deux mois et demi, mais cet argument n’a pas convaincu le chien de garde du bilinguisme au pays.

«À cet égard, je tiens à souligner que les mécanismes pour tenir compte des besoins des (communautés linguistiques minoritaires) auraient déjà dû être en place au moment où l’initiative de réinstallation des réfugiés syriens a été annoncée», est-il écrit dans le rapport du CLO.

Source: Réfugiés syriens: l’impact sur la minorité francophone au Canada a été ignoré | Mélanie Marquis | National

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Roma say they’re being barred from flights to Canada

2017/05/08 Leave a comment

Not surprising given the overall emphasis of controlling and managing the number of in Canada claims:

Ottawa is being accused of preventing Roma travellers from boarding Canada-bound flights and denying them the possibility of seeking asylum here.

Since the end of last year, advocates and lawyers say a slew of Roma passengers from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — all currently visa-exempted countries — have reported being stopped from boarding flights to Canada via transit points in England, Poland, Belgium and Germany.

The federal government denies that it is to blame. Ottawa says that while it provides assistance and advice to airlines, it’s ultimately up to the airlines themselves to decide who boards flights to Canada, and that all travellers coming to the country are subjected to scrutiny and can be denied entry.

Airlines found to have carried an improperly documented foreign national to Canada will be fined up to $3,200 per passenger and are liable for additional removal and medical costs, according to the government’s manual on the obligations of transporters.

“Ninety per cent of these travellers have valid plane tickets, the electronic travel authorization (eTA) issued by Canada and an invitation letter from their friends and relatives in Canada,” said Toronto settlement worker Paul St. Clair, who has helped many in the community write up their invitations.

“The interdiction is happening everywhere. I have had 50 Roma families in Toronto coming to us in the last six months, asking me what to do about it, how they can help their relatives come to visit.”

While advocates including St. Clair agree that many Roma, who were once known as Gypsies, may intend to come to Canada for asylum, they say Canada cannot stop legitimate refugees from travelling and accessing its asylum system if they have the proper documentation to visit the country and solid grounds to support their need for Canada’s protection.

Last year, asylum-seekers from three major source countries of Roma refugees in Canada all had acceptance rates over 50 per cent — Slovakia, 74.6 per cent; Hungary, 66.9 per cent; and the Czech Republic, 56.5 per cent, according to data from the Immigration and Refugee Board. The overall acceptance rate for refugees to Canada was 63 per cent.

“We had people already on the plane being taken off the plane and some were stopped at checkpoints. They are told Canada doesn’t want them,” said Toronto immigration lawyer George Kubes, who said he is aware of some 30 such cases in the past month from his former Roma clients in Toronto.

“They may end up filing a refugee claim here, but if they are real refugees, they have every right to make the claim when they get here.”

The accusation against Canadian border officials is not new. The Canadian Romani Alliance has complained about Roma travellers being denied since Canada lifted visa requirements against Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, after which asylum claims soared.

Last week, Ottawa took its first step to ease the travel requirements for Romanians and Bulgarians. Both countries have large Roma populations.

Visitors from those two countries are now only required to obtain an electronic travel authorization online, instead of a visa, if they have held a Canadian visitor visa in the past decade or currently hold a valid United States visa. The visa requirement against them will be fully removed Dec. 1.

Gina Csanyi-Robah of the Canadian Romani Alliance said the problem of Roma travellers being prevented from coming to Canada seemed to have improved after media reports in 2015 highlighted the issue.

She wondered if the renewed reports from Roma travellers have anything to do with the planned removal of the visa requirement for Bulgaria and Romania.

“Screening passengers is one big way to stop refugees from coming,” said Csanyi-Roba. “If they won’t need a visa to come to Canada, I won’t be surprised many Roma will try to find safety here given the persecution they face in those countries. It is going to be a challenge in terms of how the Canadian government is going to address the situation.”

Source: Roma say they’re being barred from flights to Canada | Toronto Star

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Asylum seekers fleeing U.S. may find cold comfort in Canada’s courts

2017/04/29 Leave a comment

Useful article on how the system works:

Migrants who applied for asylum in the United States but then fled north, fearing they would be swept up in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, may have miscalculated in viewing Canada as a safe haven.

That is because their time in the United States could count against them when they apply for asylum in Canada, according to a Reuters review of Canadian federal court rulings on asylum seekers and interviews with refugee lawyers.

In 2016, 160 asylum cases came to the federal courts after being rejected by refugee tribunals. Of those, 33 had been rejected in part because the applicants had spent time in the United States, the Reuters review found.

Lawyers said there could be many more such cases among the thousands of applicants who were rejected by the tribunals in the same period but did not appeal to the federal courts.

The 2016 court rulings underscore the potentially precarious legal situation now facing many of the nearly 2,000 people who have crossed illegally into Canada since January.

Most of those border crossers had been living legally in the United States, including people awaiting the outcome of U.S. asylum applications, according to Canadian and U.S. government officials and Reuters interviews with dozens of migrants.

Trump’s tough talk on illegal immigration, however, spurred them northward to Canada, whose government they viewed as more welcoming to migrants. There, they have begun applying for asylum, citing continued fears of persecution or violence in their homelands, including Somalia and Eritrea.

But Canadian refugee tribunals are wary of “asylum-shopping” and look askance at people coming from one of the world’s richest countries to file claims, the refugee lawyers said.

“Abandoning a claim in the United States or coming to Canada after a negative decision in the United States, or failing to claim and remaining in the States for a long period of time — those are all big negatives. Big, big negatives,” said Toronto-based legal aid lawyer Anthony Navaneelan, who is representing applicants who came to Canada from the United States in recent months.

The Canadian government has not given a precise figure on how many of the border crossers were asylum seekers in the United States.

But it appears their fears may have been misplaced. Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has said that anyone in the United States illegally is subject to deportation, but there is no evidence that asylum seekers with pending cases are considered illegal under the new administration.

‘Lack of seriousness’

The asylum seekers will make their cases before Canada’s refugee tribunals, which rejected 5,000 cases last year.

The tribunals’ decisions are not made public, so the reasons are not known. An Immigration and Refugee Board spokeswoman confirmed, however, that an applicant’s time in the United States can be a factor in a tribunal’s decision.

Rejected applicants can appeal to Canada’s federal courts, whose rulings are published. The federal courts upheld 19 of the 33 tribunal rejections they heard last year and recommended fresh tribunal hearings for the other 14 cases.

The judges believed those claimants had a good explanation for having been in the United States first. The outcomes of the new tribunal hearings are not known.

The federal court handles only a small portion of all applications rejected by the refugee tribunals. But overall, applicants who have spent time in the United States have a higher chance of being rejected, said multiple immigration lawyers, including two former refugee tribunal counsel, interviewed by Reuters.

Source: Asylum seekers fleeing U.S. may find cold comfort in Canada’s courts – Manitoba – CBC News

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Liberals accused of ‘housecleaning’ of Tory appointees at refugee board

2017/04/25 Leave a comment

Leave it to others to comment, particularly those with experience in dealing with the IRB.

Like all GiC appointments, there is a strong political element (and has always been).

The delay in appointments appears to be characteristic of the government, partially due to its commitment to increased diversity in appointments, but one that affects the timeliness of decision-making.

The in-depth study, 2016 Refugee Claim Data and IRB Member Recognition Rates | Canadian Council for Refugees, shows a variation in acceptance rates among members, as happens to a certain extent in all such processes:

A slew of seasoned decision-makers tasked with hearing refugee and immigration appeals have either left or will depart from their job in what some call the Liberals’ “housecleaning” of Conservative appointees.

In light of what some critics call inadequate funding and a growing backlog stemming from the recent spike in asylum-seekers crossing into Canada via the United States, the loss of the adjudicators on the immigration and refugee appeals tribunals is expected to toss the system into disarray.

“Our concern is the government is continuing to have a governor-in-council appointment process that is political and discretionary instead of going for a transparent process to appoint the most suitable candidates who are competent, judicious, fair-minded and efficient,” said Raoul Boulakia of the Refugee Lawyers’ Association of Ontario.

“The efficiency and quality of the decisions could be compromised if the people who are brought in do not have the expertise and are not judicious.”

The Immigration and Refugee Board, which oversees both appeals tribunals, said 14 appointees have left their job since last August and another 39 will have their appointments expire by the end of this year. The board confirmed a total of 42 people applied for reappointments to the tribunals, but would not say how many have been successful.

Currently, 23 of the 58 positions at the refugee appeals tribunal are unfilled while the immigration appeals division has six vacancies out of the full complement of 44 appointments.

Like the court system, the refugee and immigration appeals tribunals require adjudicators to have stronger knowledge and experience with the administration of the law in order to review decisions by lower-level refugee judges or immigration officials, who are civil servants.

While failed refugee claimants — and sometimes the immigration minister — can appeal to the refugee tribunal any questionable decisions made by asylum judges, rejected immigration applicants in sponsorships or those facing removal orders can take their cases to the immigration appeals tribunal.

As of the end of December, the immigration appeals tribunal had a backlog of 10,206 cases and a processing time of 20.4 months (compared to 17 months in 2013), while the refugee appeals division had 1,938 cases in the inventory with the average processing time at 124 days (compared to 65 days in 2013), said the refugee board.

Under the old system by the former Conservative government, existing adjudicators seeking reappointment to the tribunals would have all their previous decisions evaluated in terms of quality and quantity before being recommended by the board chair based on their track records.

However, last summer, the Liberal government, which ran an election campaign on transparency and bipartisanship, rolled out a new process for those already sitting on the tribunals by requiring them to reapply for their appointment and pass an online test.

They are then interviewed by a hiring committee made up of the refugee board chair and one representative each from the Prime Minister’s Office, Privy Council Office and the Immigration Department. The composition of the committee opens the door for partisan selection, Boulakia said.

The Privy Council said the government’s new approach to governor-in-council appointments supports “open, transparent and merit-based appointments.”

“All candidates seeking appointment to a GIC position with the Immigration and Refugee Board, be they incumbents or new candidates, are subject to a rigorous selection process developed for the position, which includes inputs and insights from the independent bodies, including the chair of the refugee board,” said Mistu Mukherjee, a spokesperson for the PCO.

“The results of these assessments, made against public and merit-based criteria, are provided to the minister. The minister makes appointment recommendation from this list of highly-qualified candidates.”

Adjudicators who took the test said the questions had nothing to do with immigration and refugee laws and complained they had no way to review the exam or find out why they might have failed.

“The process is partisan and not based on merits. They are cleaning out anyone who was appointed by the previous government, whether they are really affiliated with the Conservatives or not,” complained one adjudicator, who underwent the process and asked not to be identified for fear of repercussion.

“This is complex, technical work. It takes a long time for new members to learn the stuff. This purge means people’s (immigration) status is going to be uncertain for longer. It is going to further affect people’s ability to bring their family members to Canada. This is going to have a huge impact in people’s lives.”

Although it is a common practice for a new government to fill board and tribunal appointments with their party supporters, another affected adjudicator said the test is “flawed” and the process is “rigged.”

“What happens is you feel you are shackled to a political party with your job security resting on the whim of that party. But you are not supposed to get involved in any politics. It is just so wrong when you are not assessed by your performance and good judgment but by who you know,” said the source, whose appointment was not renewed.

“Our political leader has said to refugees, ‘Come to Canada and we will welcome you.’ It’s like an open invitation, but some people who come here are not really who they say they are. With more refugees coming, everybody will be appealing and rushing to the appeals tribunals when they are turned down. This is all about cleaning house.”

Refugee board spokesperson Anna Pape said it is not a requirement for appointees to have experience in refugee and immigration matters and “(complete) training” is provided to all new decision-makers, regardless of their education or experience.

Source: Liberals accused of ‘housecleaning’ of Tory appointees at refugee board | Toronto Star

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