About half of summer’s border crosser asylum cases heard so far rejected: IRB
OTTAWA — About half of the asylum claims heard so far from those who’ve crossed the Canada-U.S.. border since July have been rejected, the Immigration and Refugee Board said Tuesday.
But the actual number of cases the board has heard since then is a mere fraction of the 8,000 or so claims that have been filed to date.
Shereen Benzvy Miller, the head of the IRB’s refugee protection division, told a House of Commons immigration committee hearing that 240 have already been finalized, and a further 373 had been scheduled as of earlier this week, with the rate of rejection around 50 per cent.
That’s in line with the historical acceptance rate for claims by Haitian nationals in past years; the vast majority of the asylum seekers who have arrived in Quebec in particular since the summer are Haitian.