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“This (law) is the most significant rollback of refugee rights in Canada in over a decade,” said Adam Sadinsky of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers. “It’s disappointing that Canada has joined other countries in a race to the bottom in terms of protection of rights for migrants and vulnerable people.”
The number of new refugee claims Canada receives each year has surged in the last decade from about 16,000 to 190,000 in 2024, though it dropped significantly to 107,800 last year.
I know a lot of people are lamenting the change, but I can’t help but read this line above from the article, and think about the findings from the recent auditor general’s report related to Student Visa Frauds. The AG report noted that Canada’s government had capacity to investigate 2000 fraud cases per year – but that it received around 75000 such allegations per year.
A huge gap between how people ‘wish’ the country worked/functioned on that front, and the reality.
With a surge of more than 10x in a short period, our government is overwhelmed on this front. Just like our healthcare system is overwhelmed – I’ve had relatives on wait lists for specialists for years at this point. Pretty much all of Canada’s gov functions seem incapable of keeping up, even with bloated public servant numbers (under Trudeau, they hit a record of like 22% of working people working for public sector, iirc).
We need immigration of all sorts, but it needs to be managed at a level we can handle as a country. If our government can’t even come close to processing their basic paperwork in a timely manner, it’d be crazy to think our other systems that require a whole lot more than pushing a button/admin paperwork, such as healthcare and housing, would be able to keep up with the increased demand. Putting in stricter conditions for refugee claims, given that the system is likely overwhelmed by the volume, makes practical sense.
I can directly speak to the overwhelmed healthcare point. Conservative governments have consistently and deliberately underfunded and hamstrung healthcare in several provinces to make it easier to push for privatization. I have been in some of the meetings and heard it firsthand.
I was even in one meeting during covid where they planeed to announce creating a new long term care facility while explicitly telling everyone not to mention they were also closing two others.
I can directly speak to the overwhelmed healthcare point. Conservative governments have consistently and deliberately underfunded and hamstrung healthcare in several provinces to make it easier to push for privatization.
That’s the exact same thing that’s happening to the NHS in the UK.
Fuck globalization lmao, it doesn’t even matter where you choose to live anymore everything’s fucked. Welcome to Cyberpunk
20772027Yeah, those darn conservatives and their meddling during covid. It’s like they didn’t even realise the liberals were in power.
Healthcare is a provincial responsibility.
Bullshit. The government is wasting millions on defense, on oil and gas tax exemptions and subsidies, and on a whole host of other wasteful and pointless programs to benefit the capitalist class. Seeking asylum is a fundamental human right under article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If claims have gone up, 10 times, hire and train more staff to handle them. There are communities in the Maritimes with staggering levels of unemployment, and the Trump tarifs are making us shed jobs. So the government could at the same time uphold Canada’s moral standing AND give employment to Canadians.
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At a personal level, there’s going to be shitty situations all around. As noted, I personally have relatives who’ve been on waiting lists for years for things like basic mobility issues, which is significantly lowering their quality of life (like, they can’t really go out at all, they’re just stuck waiting). That’s largely the result of the health care system being overwhelmed by the surge in population. So not cutting off immigration surges, and not curtailing this sort of thing, is putting local/Canadian lives at risk.
Again, shitty to hear about your friend – and I know looking at aggregates doesn’t really make that any less shitty on a personal level. Best of luck, hopefully they can stay.
Theoretically, the government canceling thousands of claims will reduce the waitlist for the claims they don’t cancel. Hopefully they keep an exception for Ukrainian refugees, because Canada seems to be pretty good about supporting Ukraine if I’m not mistaken.
I hope your friend’s claim doesn’t get canceled and that they get to stay. It sucks for the rest of the people whose claims are getting rejected, but narrowing the scope might help Canada better serve a smaller, more manageable number of refugees.
Again, this is theoretical. I don’t know the details. I just hope they’re not rejecting any Ukrainians’ requests for refugee status…
Shameful. Seeking asylum is a fundamental human right under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Canada has voted for and signed. This supposed centrist government is literally trampling on the fundamental human rights and on Canada’s own treaty obligations.
Shame shame shame shame on the minority Liberal government for proposing it and for any party that enables them to pass it.
The UN human rights declaration’s right to asylum was built with political asylum in mind, to protect people who are genuine victims of oppression and war. It was not built for economic migrants. The abuse of the system by opportunists killed it for everyone.
Gee if only there was a way to tell who is seeking asylum for good reasons and who isn’t. Maybe some kind of process where you can apply and then the government can examine the application on its merits and make a decision? Oh wait.
Did you even read the article? There is a process and the changes outlined in the article are a change to the process to make it less game-able by economic migrants posing as refugees. Namely
anyone who first arrived in Canada after June 24, 2020, will not be allowed to make a refugee claim after one year
Which makes a lot of sense, because it impacts approximately 0 genuine refugees (they either get refugee visas before arrival or tend to apply as soon as they arrive) and cuts out lots of economic migrants posing as refugees (who tend to arrive on a temporary work permit or student visa and want to extend their stay).
The article is NOT about abolishing the right to apply for asylum.
It denies that right to thousands of people who already legally made a claim. Their human right to seek asylum is being denied.
How would you like it if you had taken all the legal steps to apply for asylum and then a government comes and retroactively decided that, “no, your application never even happened, fuck you”?
And then, let’s be clear. Even if 80% (a percentage I pulled out of my ass to look “high”, it could well be much less than that) of the 19,000 applications that are likely to be impacted were going to be rejected anyway, that means that 20% of them are legitimate cases. That would be 3800 people who are genuine refugees for whom Canada will just trample over their legitimate right to asylum. The MS St Louis that Canada famously forbade from unloading Jewish refugees fleeing from the fucking Holocaust had about 900 passengers, about 200 of whom ended up in gas chambers. Those 900 people are a stain in Canada’s history. And now we are just cancelling the applications, without any recourse, of many times over their number. We should have learned the lesson of MS St Louis.
Holocaust story you shared is sad but has nothing to do with this specific change. I find it really disturbing that you cheapen the unique suffering of holocaust victims to score points here. Holocaust victims, or indeed anyone genuinely needing asylum, would not have waited over a year to apply.
There has to be a cutoff for any change. I think there is a genuine argument to be made from a rule of law perspective that no law should have retroactive effect. However, considering your posts in this thread I have a feeling you wouldn’t be satisfied with making this law not retroactive anyway.
Holocaust story you shared is sad but has nothing to do with this specific change.
Holy fuck is this a bad faith argument.
I’ll save you guys some trouble and say just stop engaging with the bait right here lol
Apparently whatever disease the US has is contagious.
Major capitalist megacorporations are exploiting things behind the scenes in both countries. Canadian bureaucracy has just slowed it down more.
I can definitely tell you that. The UK was fine up until a couple years ago. Now everyone seems more enraged about migrants here than those sensationalist stories I used to read about civil unrest in Sweden.
supported by Conservatives, backed by the Liberals, whispers from the NDP.
I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, our political system is a joke. We have conservatives, conservatives in sheeps clothing, and a party that hasn’t had an original thought in its head since Jack Layton passed away.
Every time I go to the polls all I can think is “which type of shit am I more willing to tolerate eating this time?”
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Wtf
So fuck the refugees but TFWs are fine? What the fuck, Carney? I don’t care about how much the demand for refugee status has increase, those numbers can be directly subtracted from the amount of TFWs we bring in. They can complain about fraud all they like but IMO it’s a ridiculous argument to make while ever corporations are allowed to scam our country with temporary foreign workers. I’d much rather high refugee numbers and immigration numbers than high temporary worker numbers.
Wtf canada?
I feel terrible for the people who were promised refugee status and now are thrown to the wayside. Why does this have to be retroactive? Is it really so important to ditch the last 6 months’ refugees?
inhuman cruelty
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“100k of them” very humanizing language. “Most of the apps were fraudulent” I guess innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply to “them”
God Lemmy.ca is turning into a neo-fascist shithole like /r/canada. What a shame
something tells me you got kicked of reddit for a good reason jumping to such rhetoric. also “them” because male, female. wouldn’t want to misgender anybody now~
The behavior of the liberals over the past decade or so made me wonder how and why did anyone think of liberals as being ‘soft’. These guys have hearts of stone.
It’s because what happened in the US is happening here. Both major parties are owned by the rich ruling class. We have two right-wing parties and neither of them care for actual people.
Holy shit. Whaaaaaat?
Et tu, Bruté?
