Canada’s refugee-determination system is broken, and has been for decades. The question is how to fix it — and which of our politicians is brave and creative enough to accomplish the repairs?
Leaving a meeting Sunday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the Mexican government was not to blame for the flood of asylum-seekers entering Canada from Mexico in the past four years. It was not the action or inaction of Mr. Calderon’s government that had compelled Canada to impose visa requirements on all visitors from Mexico beginning last month. The culprit was Canada’s lax refugee system, which practically invites illegitimate applicants to come, and seems unable to expel any — even those whose applications are turned down –once they are in the country.
Of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who apply each year for refugee status in Canada, no more than 8% to 10% will ever be successful. If we used the strict definition of who is and is not a refugee employed by many other nations (and the UN), the success rate likely would be as low as 2% or 3%. Still, in the four to five years it can take to get a verdict, applicants will consume tens of thousands of dollars each in social programs. Many earn tens of thousands more under the table. (Work by refugee applicants is prohibited; still many manage to find it in the black market.)
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This system is like Health Care …broken. It needs to be run like any other business; it needs constant tweaking by trial and error to adapt to changing times. But government does not tweak. It either holds the status quo for so long that we hit a crisis point or it does what Obama is doing now and taking 16 % of the US economy and throwing it into a blender.
The whole refugee thing is a way for lawyers to pilfer money. For example I know a Pilipino who recently got his Canadian papers after being here a few years and his application was tied up in the bureaucracy. Finally his lawyer applied for him under refugee status and he got the papers quickly. This guy will be a great Canadian, why he needs to apply under refugee status from the Philippines where he was not persecuted is insane. It is just a bottle neck that the lawyers don’t want dismantled because that would be the end of their ability to rip off clients.
It is like tort laws in the US Health Care system, one of the reasons for high cost. But since most of our politicians are lawyers they won’t attack their lawyer buddies.
I expected Harper to blame the Liberals while he spoke on the world stage. Perhaps he’s learning. Why he would state that it’s Canada’s fault that Mexican’s need a visa is beyond me. Once again he’s washing our dirty laundry in public. I do believe the system has to be tightened up and the first thing they have to do is track people who come into the country and claim to be refugees. Definitely they should be locked up or deported immediately if they are denied.
If does not wash our laundry in public nothing will get done, the lieberal backroom and senate will just ignore and stall any program of change as long as possible. They citizen/voters must stand-up and make it happen.
These kind of “sacred cow” programs hemorrhage tax dollars uncontrollably and no-one seems to care…