Canadian Embassy warns of inaccurate info on refugee policy

The Embassy of Canada in Egypt has recently warned against the presence and circulation of fake and inaccurate information that went viral on social media, especially Facebook pages, regarding changes to Canada’s refugee policy with regards to Egyptian, Burundi, and Afghan nationals.

According to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRPA), the nationalities mentioned above were mainly designated based on “high 2016 national acceptance rates, a sufficiently high volume of cases, and review of common claim types and issues relating to claims from these countries.”

Later, the controversial news turned out to be inaccurate and misleading as the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) clarified that it expedited its policy to allow the processing of the claims for certain refugees without a hearing. The referred to policy has been extended to certain countries including Afghanistan, Burundi, Egypt and Yemen. This action is said to be time saving for asylum seekers to Canada, and it would make the process much faster.

Canada’s Expedited Process for Refugee Policy was first issued in 2015. Accordingly, “claims made by claimants who are nationals of certain countries may be determined to be a Convention refugee or a person in need of protection without a hearing”. Since then, claims from Syria, Iraq and Eritrea have been considered eligible for processing under the policy.