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Canada will cancel thousands of refugee claims under new retroactive law (www.thestar.com)

submitted 1 day ago by NightOwl@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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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.”

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[-] daannii@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Most of the people seeking asylum are coming from places where U.S (and those that supported them, like Canada) are directly responsible for the economic instability. The civil wars. The dictators and corrupt governments that these people are fleeing from.

Why do they flee to other countries ?

Because we have a strong hand in creating chaos in theirs. Yet we deny them a place to live in peace.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 20 points 13 hours ago

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.

[-] lbfgs@programming.dev 1 points 13 hours ago

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.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 12 points 13 hours ago

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.

[-] lbfgs@programming.dev 5 points 10 hours ago

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.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

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.

[-] patatas@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago

no no, that's far too onerous. But since you clearly don't like us just blanket rejecting these applications, let's feed the claims into this racist ai machine as a compromise

[-] TheDoctorDonna@piefed.ca 11 points 13 hours ago

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.

[-] nothingcorporate@lemmy.today 18 points 15 hours ago

Apparently whatever disease the US has is contagious.

[-] grey_maniac@lemmy.ca 8 points 9 hours ago

Major capitalist megacorporations are exploiting things behind the scenes in both countries. Canadian bureaucracy has just slowed it down more.

[-] jaselle@lemmy.ca 11 points 14 hours ago

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?

[-] wampus@lemmy.ca 27 points 17 hours ago

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.

[-] grey_maniac@lemmy.ca 7 points 9 hours ago

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.

[-] wampus@lemmy.ca -5 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, those darn conservatives and their meddling during covid. It's like they didn't even realise the liberals were in power.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 hours ago

Healthcare is a provincial responsibility.

[-] Windex007@lemmy.world 17 points 14 hours ago

At the risk of sounding like a tech bro...

I work for one of the largest banks in the world. The organizational inefficiency... incompetence... is staggering. That's a for profit hyper-capitalist enterprise. I used to wonder why banks keep needing bailouts. I don't wonder any more.

I don't want the government run like a business for 2 reasons:

governments are to provide services, not to make profit
BUISINESSES aren't even run well.

The operational waste, I can only imagine is staggering. I'd love it if actually smart people actually made improvements. Not just fucking McKinsey saying "fire 10% of people and necessity will breed efficiency"

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 hours ago

It's my understanding that government run operations tend to be more efficient. Sure, you constantly hear about the waste, but who are you hearing it from? It's from capitalists who want to own it, because then they can profit from it, and them profiting from it implies that that money is being taken from the revenue of the operation.

[-] grey_maniac@lemmy.ca 6 points 9 hours ago

Notice the Big 3 recommendations are always fire 10% and never cut C-Suite comp by 10%.

[-] wampus@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago

What banks in Canada received bailouts, exactly? Even during the 2008 collapse, no bailouts, no small FIs (credit unions) went under.

I think you're thinking of America.

And in this case, my comment wasn't about op ex or efficiencies specifically. It's just a blunt statement that the canadian government can't handle all the immigration, nor can canadian systems or infrastructure. It's all crumbling as a result of stupid levels of immigration -- which accounts for practically 100% of our population gains for the past however many years. Housing prices fluctuate based on immigration levels -- housing costs have been going down since 2024 (before trump and the recent nonsense), the same time that they put harder caps on immigration. If you look at a comparison between the real housing price index and our immigration levels over the past two decades, the spikes and dips match up pretty well.

People unquestionably in favour of immigration don't look at what it does to the sustainability and stability of existing infrastructure/ecosystems. Introduce an influx of hundreds of thousands of wolves to a pasture, and it doesn't matter how efficient the 2000 worker sheep may be, they're all fucked. You can't instantly create hundreds of thousands of sheep to meet the new demand for sheep from the hundreds of thousand of wolves. Our government can't manage to do basic checks on even the reported abuses, so it really isn't any surprise that we have shit like international gang extortion rings in BC these days.

[-] Windex007@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

I work for a US Bank. I'm 83% sure I'm thinking of exactly what I think I'm thinking of.

[-] wampus@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

And you're posting in a thread about Canada. We ain't the USA's 51st state, so kindly fuck off.

[-] BinzyBoi@piefed.ca 8 points 15 hours ago

I can understand this, but I can't help but worry about friend of mine from Ukraine who came here through a work permit and has been trying to get refugee status since then at the risk of being sent back now that their permit has expired. They didn't apply as a refugee initially since they came here a few months before the invasion.

They've told me the struggles with the waitlists, and it just sounds so frustrating. I understand student visa fraud being an issue, but doing a blanket cutoff like this will put lives at risk.

[-] wampus@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago

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.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 4 points 13 hours ago

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.

[-] ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 hours ago

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.

[-] Typhoon@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago

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.

[-] Soup@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Stone? Whatever their hearts are, it’s something capable of being rotten. I just don’t understand why we thought electing the party that cancelled electoral reform, specifically because they’d lose if we had a real say, would actually give a shit about us. People get real aggressive with their speculation on what the NDP is and isn’t capable of but the Liberals keep showing us who they are those same people keep voting for them.

Embarrassing.

[-] rozodru@piefed.world 15 points 19 hours ago

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?"

[-] ageedizzle@piefed.ca 15 points 18 hours ago

Hopefully the election of their new leader will allow the NDP to turn a new leaf

[-] theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 16 hours ago

inhuman cruelty

[-] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 day ago

I am truly disgusted by this shit. What have we become?

[-] a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago

The US, apparently.

[-] BinzyBoi@piefed.ca 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Looking forward to seeing how the Carney supporters twist this one.

Quick edit to tell people to check out the Migrant Rights Network website and to get involved with them.

[-] arockinyourshoe@lemmy.world 11 points 21 hours ago

Something something PP would have been worse.

Which, yes, I agree, but this still isn't a good look.

[-] CannonFodder@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

It certainly isn't a good look. And it's also bad policy. But this direction is what got Carney elected. People were blaming Trudeau for employment difficulties due to immigration. Carney's change in direction on this file allowed many people to reconsider the liberals. That and his great messaging on trump in contrast to pp - but that likely wouldn't have been enough in its own. And imagine how bad it would be with pp.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 3 points 13 hours ago

"People" were not blaming immigrants, the right wing propaganda machine was. Immigrants pay taxes, start businesses, innovate and create wealth. The anti-immigration rhetoric risks making Canada a right wing shithole country like the US.

[-] CannonFodder@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

Yes they totally were. Even leftists were talking about the scam college pathways funneling people to take up all the service jobs. Canadian born youth didn't have a chance at getting jobs. And that was actually true by the stats. The government was aiming for higher and higher immigration numbers and it was disruptive. Yes, we obviously need immigrants, lots of them and they're a huge plus to the economy. But the rhetoric on the street in trudeaus's last weeks was very much that the liberals had gone too far. The clear reversal by Carney was politically well timed. And I think he knows what he's doing to balance the levels as best as possible in these difficult times.