Activists from the Migrant Rights Network (MRN) say a “secretive policy shift” may be brewing at Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) which may explain the unprecedented rate of rejections of permanent residence applications on Humanitarian and Compassionate grounds. Richard Goldman, a lawyer at Montreal City Mission, believes that some policy change may have occurred, but whether this involves the personnel assessing the applications, the training of these personnel or an internal directive is unknown. “The Humanitarian and Compassionate application system is broken,” says Syed Hussan, who works with the Migrant Rights Network (MRN) secretariat, which organized marches in Montreal and Ottawa this past weekend to demand the government extend residency status to all migrants in order to ensure their equal access to rights. “And as the data we released is showing, it can arbitrarily be changed without oversight or accountability.” Currently, over 1.6 million people are living in Canada without permanent status. They include undocumented people who live in constant fear of detention and deportation while struggling to find jobs with decent pay and working conditions, access basic health care, or reunite with loved ones. Undocumented migrants and asylum seekers whose permanent residency applications have been rejected often turn to the Humanitarian and Compassionate pathway (H&C) as a last resort. However, the application is expensive and difficult to navigate, and applicants still run the risk of being deported during the process. According to MRN, from 2016 to 2019, the H&C acceptance rate averaged 64 per cent. Rejections increased to 42 per cent in 2020, doubling to nearly 70 per cent in the first quarter of 2021, according to IRCC numbers revealed by MRN at a press conference earlier this month. The numbers: Humanitarian and Compassionate applications received by the IRCC In a response to Radio-Canada, the IRCC insists the numbers have not changed. Expecting the refusal rate to eventually stabilize, it blames administrative delays resulting from the pandemic which have slowed down other immigration applications over the past year. Migrant justice advocates argue that this cannot be the case. Based on statistics of applications received by the IRCC, the ratio of applications processed by immigration officers during the COVID-19 pandemic mirrors that of pre-pandemic times. They have nevertheless rejected a much higher proportion of applications since 2020. The IRCC did not respond to NCM’s request for comment. Although immigration officials introduced new “pathways” to permanent residence during the pandemic, critics say they are inadequate as they favour certain groups — students or professionals from high-income backgrounds — over racialized and low-income migrants. “What we’ve seen is a series of very piecemeal announcements that are short-lived, and…it is primarily working-class and racialized people who are the most excluded,” says Hussan. He emphasizes that although the pandemic has highlighted Canada’s need for immigration, with the government struggling to meet its own targets, undocumented people, many of whom are already living and working in Canada, have been neglected. In contrast to a refugee claim — centred around the threat of persecution in one’s country of origin — the H&C application requires a demonstration of the hardship that would be faced if someone were to leave Canada. The definition of hardship, however, is unclear. Goldman explains that Article 25 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is based on sufficient “humanitarian considerations” toward granting permanent residence. “You couldn’t get much broader or vaguer than that,” he says. It has been left to the courts to define this further. In 2015, the Supreme Court rejected the IRCC’s requirement to consider only applications that demonstrated hardship that was “excessive and unusual,” subsequently creating additional parameters around what constitutes a reasonable decision. Yet, as IRCC officers have inordinate discretion over H&C cases, the process remains extremely subjective. Appealing a rejected H&C decision is also more difficult than appealing refused asylum claims because the burden is on the applicant to prove that the officer’s decision was “unreasonable” rather than simply “wrong” based on the facts of the case. The H&C application states a list of factors that could constitute hardship including discrimination in the country of origin and substantial ties to Canada such as personal relationships, volunteer work or employment. Notably, it claims to be the only application that considers the best interests of the child.