Stewart Sharma Harsanyi Immigration Law Firm Blog

World Refugee Day

It's the 6th anniversary of World Anniversary Day. The turmoil in Iraq and Sudan have worsened conditions for thousands of innocent men, women and children. Canada continues to be one of the world's largest 'settlement solution' for refugees and internally displaced individuals. Citizenship and Immigration site here. Refugee claimants in Canada are required to establish conditions in his or her country of origin necessitate accessing Canada's protection. In addition to refugee claimants, H&C applications, appeals of removal orders before the IAD, and PRRA applications also benefit or require information about the country of return. Essentially the applicant is required to provide objective country condition documents that corroborate or buttress the claimant's allegations of hardship, risk and/or harm. Contained in this post is what I typically use in reviewing source country conditions. One interesting site that I've recently come across is at the Foreign Policy website (www.foreignpolicy.com) and a recent article on that site - 'The Failed States Index of 2007'. The article ranks failed states. In my opinion, there should be a strong correlation between success before the RPD and the ranking of the claimant's country of nationality. Not surprisingly, the rankings of failed states does not match the top... Read more →

Terror charges dropped against Khadr

Omar Khadr - the sole Canadian in Guantanamo had some unexpected news when he showed up for his arraignment before an infamous Bush Administration military tribunal. The charges against him were dropped without prejudice. The fact that the charges were dropped is nothing significant, and is essentially an issue only of semantics - 'enemy combatant' vs. 'unlawful enemy combatant'. The US government will undoubtedly and quickly re-file the charges. Michael Ignatieff, the deputy Liberal leader and Joe Comartin of the NDP quickly expressed that the Canadian government should essentially be doing more for a Canadian citizen like Omar. As an example of what could be done, is Australian David Hicks who was also incarcerated in Gitmo, but took advantage of a 'deal', pled guilty and has returned to Australia to serve his sentence (he'll probably be out of jail by the end of the year). Hicks was supported by his government who pressured the US for a repatriation agreement. Mr. Hicks even has a web site that advocated for his release. No such support seems likely for Omar given the apathy (or flat out antagonism) of the Canadian public towards Omar and the Conservative government has made no request for... Read more →