Stewart Sharma Harsanyi Immigration Law Firm Blog

Client Facing Removal Because of a "Short Marriage"

Client facing removal from Canada because Immigration felt that his first marriage was not genuine. Read more →

The Luck of the Draw? Judicial Review of Refugee Determinations in the Federal Court of Canada (2005-2010)

Here is the link to Sean Rehaag's latest research paper on this issue: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2027517 He sets out statistics on grant rates for each Federal Court judge (at the leave and merits stages) from 2005 to 2010. There is a large variability in grant rates across judges. For example, Justice Campbell granted leave in around 78% of the 238 perfected applications he decided, whereas Justice Crampton granted leave in around 1% of the 221 perfected applications he decided. The abstract for the paper reads: This working paper offers an empirical examination of judicial review in Canada's Federal Court in the refugee law context. Drawing on a dataset of over 23,000 applications for judicial review of refugee determinations from 2005 to 2010, the paper examines whether outcomes in these life-and-death applications turn on their merits, or whether, instead, they hinge on which judge is assigned to decide the application. The paper reveals that outcomes over the past five years frequently came down to the luck of the draw, with, for example, one judge more than 50 times as likely to grant applications than another judge. Based on these findings, the author offers several recommendations for reform to enhance fairness and consistency in... Read more →

Refugee acceptance rates

The data on refugee claim recognition rates for 2011 is now up on the CCR's website and is available here: http://ccrweb.ca/en/2011-refugee-claim-data Read more →

An Unusual Argument

Experienced immigration lawyer Barbara Jackman argued that Justice Shore of the Federal Court has an "unconscious" bias when criminals are before him. My office was contacted by Ms Jackmans assistant for our material on the Tran material (one judicial review application was heard before Mr Justice Shore). That may have been used in her statistical analysis. Statistics may be deceiving however. If serious criminality and low probability applications are involved then the outcome is likely to be negative. Moreover, Justice Shore's judgments cannot be viewed isolation. There should be a comparison of similar decisions/similar facts with other Justices of the Court. National Post article excerpt: ... A lawyer appealing the deportation of the son of an Egyptian terror suspect mounted an unusual legal challenge, claiming a Federal Court judge was biased against criminals. Barbara Jackman, a Toronto immigration lawyer, submitted a statistical analysis of past decisions by Federal Court of Canada Justice Michel Shore to suggest he comes to court with a closed mind on cases involving immigration and criminality. The Federal Court of Appeal dismissed that notion, however, calling the report methodologically unsound and tainted by ideology. The study examining 54 previous judgments of Justice Shore was written by... Read more →

Immigration Acceptance Rates

These statistics were provided to a journalist by CIC - see below for provisos. The number of H&C applications made by failed refugee claimants in 2011 (as of February 16, 2012) was 3,400. However, due to the fact that H&C applications for refugee claimants are often only entered into the system once processing of the application commences (currently an average of 30 months), this figure under reports the number of H&C applications that may have been made by refugee claimants in 2011. In 2010, about 4,300 failed refugee claimants submitted H&C applications. The acceptance rate for all H&C applications in 2011 was 40%. For failed refugee claimants, the H&C acceptance rate was 35%. Read more →