Thousands of refugee claimants already in the system awaiting a hearing will have their asylum claims terminated under new eligibility criteria that are applied retroactively in a law that has just taken effect.
Under the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, which received royal assent Thursday night, anyone who first arrived in Canada after June 24, 2020, will not be allowed to make a refugee claim after one year, regardless of whether they left the country and returned.
Those who have come to Canada after that date and made their claims since June 3, 2025 — when the proposed eligibility rule was initially announced — will have their claims cancelled.
The Immigration Department said an estimated 29,000 asylum claims filed between June 3, 2025, and Jan. 31, 2026, will not be allowed to proceed under the ineligibility measures in Bill C-12.
Rather than being given a chance to present their cases in an oral hearing before an independent tribunal, affected claimants will only be assessed on paper submissions by immigration officials with regards to the likelihood their lives would be at risk if they’re returned to their country.
Irregular migrants entering from the U.S. between land ports of entry will also be denied the right to asylum.
“This (law) is the most significant rollback of refugee rights in Canada in over a decade,” said Adam Sadinsky of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers. “It’s disappointing that Canada has joined other countries in a race to the bottom in terms of protection of rights for migrants and vulnerable people.”
The number of new refugee claims Canada receives each year has surged in the last decade from about 16,000 to 190,000 in 2024, though it dropped significantly to 107,800 last year. Officials attributed the decline to the new visa requirement for Mexican travellers, tightened border enforcement against irregular migrants and heightened scrutiny of visa applications.
The new law, supported by the Conservatives, has also given the government extraordinary power “to cancel, suspend or change a large group of immigration documents, pause application intake, or cancel or suspend application processing” if it’s in the “public interest.”
Although Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab has said those public interest grounds only include fraud, administrative errors or concerns for public health, safety or national security, critics worry that future governments may misuse this new power for other purposes.
“Cancellation of documents sounds innocuous, but it could go as far as cancelling large groups of permanent resident cards, or large groups of visas, or work permits,” said Kyle Hyndman, a former chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s immigration law division.
“This government has given itself quite a bit of power to make changes to the immigration system and to do things that could be arbitrary, protecting them from scrutiny.”
The Liberal government has said restricting asylum eligibility is necessary as the backlog of claims awaiting decisions nears 300,000. Critics said officials are simply shifting the caseload from the refugee board to the Immigration Department, which is responsible for risk assessments.
The department said the current processing time for risk assessments is about 16 months and it has increased processing capacity with additional trained officers. “People whose claims are reassessed as ineligible will be notified by the department by mail, along with information about next steps,” it told the Star.
Both Hyndman and Sadinsky believe the new law will certainly be challenged over its constitutionality and based on Canada’s international obligations when it comes to the asylum provision.
“The courts are the next frontier,” Hyndman said.
