HUMANITARIAN & COMPASSIONATE APPLICATIONS
While working for immigration I was assigned to the Ontario Regional Office as a Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C) Program Specialist. My responsibility was to respond to a clients Counsel when they complained that the immigration officer assessing their client’s H&C application did not accurately assess the H&C factors they put forward.
Many immigration counsels were submitting H&C applications doing their best to show that the IRB Refugee Protection Division (RPD) did not accurately assess their client’s asylum claim. Lawyers would write lengthy letters complaining about the immigration officer/decision maker that I was required to respond to for the Regional Director. My standard response was that their client’s asylum claim had already been denied by the RPD and their client had been afforded due process even through the courts. I was restricted from being too terse, blunt or to the point why their clients were being refused.
Convincing various immigration counsels that they needed to show that their clients faced an unusual, undeserved, or disproportionate hardship not intended by the Act or the Regulations to apply for landing from within Canada was difficult. I could not understand why these immigration counsels did not use the objectives of the immigration act in their submissions to prove their clients were deserving of compassion.
When I opened up my own immigration firm, I was successful with my first three clients H&C applications by proving my clients deserved compassion. Decades ago, the H&C decision makers used to state outlandish reasons for refusal as was exhibited in the Mavis Baker decision. That Officer said that the Mavis Baker four Canadian born children were the only H&C factors.
Toronto finally got a free newspaper called the METRO and one innovative Immigration Lawyer started posting articles in this paper about immigration. His first article about Humanitarian and Compassionate applications was titled COMPASSION IS COMMON SENSE!
Every single H&C application I submit on behalf of my clients I always use (common sense) as a reason the decision maker should approve my client. I try to prove that the average Canadian would offer my client compassion based on the common-sense factors that I have put forward in my submissions.
In 2003 I met with a potential client who had just received a negative (PRRA) Pre-Removal Risk Assessment written by a former Immigration Manager then a Consultant. The client was a single mother from China with a Canadian born child. The PRRA decision was five pages in length ending with the words “However, this in my opinion does not constitute a risk to life or to the security of the person”.
The PRRA Officer refuted every single reason the now Immigration Consultant had put forward on behalf of their client. The applicant had included a note saying returning her with her child would cause her unusual hardship and her child would be given no rights in China.
I read the whole refusal letter and when I got to the last page, I became angry because the PRRA Officer referred to the Canadian born child as out-of-wedlock and an unplanned child. Three times as an “illegitimate child”! I thought how dare this officer call any child illegitimate just because there is no father listed on the birth certificate. I then reread that last paragraph.
The PRRA Officer wrote that a single mother from China would face financial penalties often several times one’s annual salary for her out-of-wedlock Canadian child. That the mother would be subjected to social prejudice because she was Un-Wed. That China would restrict registration of her child thereby denying them access to state funded education and requiring the mother to pay foreign student fees to educate her Canadian child.
The PRRA Officer by being so terse and blunt was trying to inform the former Immigration Manager (Immigration Consultant) that you *&^&%%$$$* this should be an H&C application instead of a PRRA application.
My submissions were approved in 18 days. OH, how I long for prompt processing again!
COMMON SENSE RULES.
