Proposed New Refugee Legislation: BILL C-31

The Bill combines the proposed anti-smuggling Bill C-4, the current refugee system, and the future refugee system, as well as additional new elements, including the use of biometrics.

According to a recent press release, as CIC moved to implement the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, they realized further changes were needed. The objectives of these amendments are to accelerate processing and decision making, limit access to post-claim recourse, accelerate removal, limit access to the refugee determination process and to remove  incentives to abuse the system.

The smuggling provisions of the Bill include all the provisions from C-4 with additional comments. Finally, very little is said with regard to biometrics, other than the proposed changes are to allow for regulations to cover issues related to who must do it, exceptions, and the correct use of the information.

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