Budget Officer: Cost and Refugee Claims

budget officer: The actual amounts vary depending on how long asylum seekers wait for their refugee claims to be finalized, budget officer Yves Giroux wrote in his report, according to CTV. Claimants accepted at their first hearings cost the federal government less; those who exhaust all legal avenues and are eventually removed from Canada cost more. A report Thursday from the parliamentary budget officer calculates the average cost of each irregular migrant who arrived in Canada between April 2017 and March 2018 at 14,321. The PBO projects that costs per migrant will rise to 16,666 in the fiscal year ending March 2020 because of longer wait times for migrants waiting to complete the entire asylum-claim process, which will mean the federal government will be responsible for their health care for longer. Canada has experienced an influx of irregular migrants through the border with the United States since early 2017, shortly after the Trump administration took steps to end temporary protected status for tens of thousands of migrants living in the U.S. Since then, almost 35,000 asylum seekers have filed refugee claims at the Immigration and Refugee Board, Canada's arm's-length agency that deals with refugee claims and appeals. Giroux warned that 340 million or more could become an annual cost if Canada doesn't see any decrease in the number of irregular asylum-seekers. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.