Canada is witnessing a sudden rise in the number of asylum claimants at domestic airports after Ottawa eased certain requirements for thousands of visitor visa applicants.
From January through September 2023, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) processed a total of 52,240 asylum claimants, which includes numbers from land, air, and marine ports of entry, and claims made at inland offices.
Of these, 26,585 claims (which is roughly half of the total number of asylum claims processed by CBSA) were at airports, an increase of 54 percent from 2022’s total. While numbers have been on the rise since last year, the trend accelerated in spring.
1,595 applications were processed in March, which increased to 2,285 in the following month, and 4,350 in June.
In March, Ottawa closed Roxham Road, which is a popular route into Quebec for asylum seekers. Would-be claimants have thus started relying on finding new entry points into Canada.
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The Globe and Mail Matt Lundy asserts that a less-publicized factor further contributed to this trend, however – Canada’s waiving of some eligibility requirements for visitor visa applicants.
In particular, they do not have to show the availability of sufficient funds or demonstrate that they will leave the country when their visas expire. Implemented on February 28, this policy is set to carry out through to the end of 2023 as a means to clear the immigration application backlog in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) inventories.
“The accumulated visitor visa inventory is limiting Canada’s attractiveness for tourists and business persons, in addition to keeping families separated. Facilitating the processing of applications currently in the inventory by streamlining eligibility requirements will position Canada for a clean start and a return to pre-pandemic processing times, thereby ensuring our international competitiveness moving forward,” read the IRCC website page on this public policy.
IRCC was reported to be considering such a move in January, after a leaked government document outlined ways to reduce a large number of visa applications.
The memo said that not all temporary resident visa (TRV) applicants would be “genuine visitors,” and that in waiving eligibility requirements for those individuals, an additional 8,600 asylum claims could be sent in.
Waiving eligibility requirements, as per the memo, would apply to 450,000 TRV applications in the system.
Although Ottawa did not make any public disclosures till June, it went ahead with the plan.
“The percentage of people coming to Canada on a TRV and claiming asylum remains low compared to the overall volume of TRVs the department typically issues each year,” IRCC spokesperson Mary Rose Sabater said.
“In the current reality of increasing global migration, Canada, like many other countries, is experiencing a rise in the number of people claiming asylum.”
Several experts have issued criticism on the expedited processing of applications, as they argue that IRCC is not screening visitors and putting additional burden on an already-struggling refugee system.
IRCC’s inventories had more than 2.6 million applications at times last year, including visitor visas, work and study permits, and permanent residency applications.
As of August 31, 2.2 million applications are in the queue.
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“The accumulated visitor visa inventory is limiting Canada’s attractiveness for tourists and business persons, in addition to keeping families separated,” the government said.
“Facilitating the processing of applications currently in the inventory by streamlining eligibility requirements will position Canada for a clean start and a return to pre-pandemic processing times, thereby ensuring our international competitiveness moving forward.”
Visitor visa applications that were in the system by January 16 were to be subject to the measure.
Those seeking “super visas” (which allow parents and grandparents of Canadians to visit the country for five years) were also waived the requirement to establish that they would leave the country by the end of their visa’s duration.
Despite these exemptions, prospective visitors are still subject to screening procedures to ensure that they are not threats to national security.
The following countries sent the highest numbers of asylum claimants:
- Mexico
- India
- Kenya
- Ethiopia
- the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Nigeria
- Uganda
Quebec had the highest number of asylum claims made at airports.
Conditions for Exemptions:
Delegated officers can grant exemptions for applications for temporary resident visas, from the requirements of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, if the following conditions are met (quoted directly from the IRCC webpage):
- The foreign national
-
- submitted from outside Canada an application for a temporary resident visa under section 179 of the Regulations as a member of the visitor class on or before January 16, 2023;
- was 18 years of age or older on January 16, 2023;
- in the four years preceding the date the application referred to in (i) was received, did not have a temporary resident visa, study permit, work permit, or permanent resident visa application refused, if they were not subsequently approved for an application for a temporary resident visa, work permit or study permit;
- did not submit the application referred to in (i) using the electronic form identified for the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel initiative, or by any other means that is made available or specified by the Minister for the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel;
- did not request in their application referred to in (i) that the temporary resident visa be granted as a super visa in accordance with the Ministerial Instructions regarding the Parent and Grandparent Super Visa, that came into force on July 4, 2022 or the Ministerial Instructions regarding the Parent and Grandparent Super Visa, that came into force on December 1, 2011.
- The foreign national
- holds a temporary resident visa that was issued following facilitation under (1); and
- seeks to enter Canada as a visitor for the first time following the issuance of the temporary resident visa described in (i).
