Canada receives 73,000 asylum claims
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Chairman of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board Richard Wex announced that the board has received around 73,000 asylum claims and the wait time for a hearing now hovers at around 24 months.
Many of claims are from asylum seekers who came through the U.S.-Canada border since late 2015 after U.S. President Donald Trump came into the office with a mandate to crack down on illegal migrants, Wex said.
On Tuesday, refugee judges began assessing claims under what is known as a file-review process, meaning a decision is made based on submissions from claimants, without a hearing, and a short-hearing process, where there are few disputable issues, according to the Toronto Star.
“These new instructions are examples of initiatives recently put in place to slow the growth of the inventory and wait times for claimants,” refugee board Wex told the Star.
“By matching our efforts with the complexity of each claim, we are using our resources more effectively, which will result in more refugee claim decisions,” he added.
Wex said that short hearings would be held especially for those suffering from persecution, corruption, extortion, threats of kidnapping by militias or threats of threats of political opinion.
These countries and claims were selected for faster processing because they have an acceptance rate of 80 per cent or higher and the type of risks the asylum seekers face are generally well documented, the chairman noted.
In December, the board started triaging the claims based on two newly created lists of countries and claims. In total, 25 refugee judges have been assigned to the new effort.
//Petra//WH
