Immigration And Refugee Dept: Yet implementing change has been difficult. There are vociferous opponents, including refugee advocacy groups, lawyers and some members of the Liberal caucus, according to Globe And Mail. Under amendments to the bill, bureaucrats would decide whether an applicant would be considered eligible within 15 days, instead of the proposed eight days, and the case would be heard by the Immigration and Refugee Board within 90 days, instead of the proposed 60. Compared with the current process, this is much speedier and immigration Minister Jason Kenney must be credited for introducing the long-overdue bill – and for accepting amendments proposed by the Liberal immigration critic, Maurizio Bevilacqua. It is a welcome sign that a flexible and consensual approach can allow a minority government to accomplish its goals. It helps that Liberals too have long acknowledged the need to reform a system that has a backlog of 60,000 claims, and includes democracies such as Mexico and Hungary as top source countries for asylum seekers. The bill’s new Refugee Appeal Division and the appointment of bureaucrats, not political appointees, as first-level decision-makers, are sensible changes that few oppose. As
reported in the news.
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@t globe and mail, refugee appeal
3.6.10
