Perhaps I missed something but I don't see any reference here to the individual having obtained/lost citizenship.
Refugee status cessation and PRs applying for citizenship
- Thread starter dpenabill
- Start date
You are right. Should have just said it's a case linked to cessation. Cessation happens before citizenship.
Meant to add: the show notes include a few links, but noticeably this article by Mr. Cannon, about the issue - for those that prefer reading to podcasts and youtube.
https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2023CanLIIDocs405
(Annoyingly you have to scroll to page 41 so it's not that convenient esp on phones etc).
This link might be better/easier to access with less scrolling: https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2023CanLIIDocs405#Cessation_of_Refugee_Protection_in_the_LA_Failure_of_Principle____Douglas_Cannon
Here is a message of hope for all those whose cases are stuck in a limbo for whatever reasons:
Applied for citizenship in 2015. Passed the citizenship test and having met all the requirements waited for the Oath Ceremony.
For 6 years, nothing. Nada. Rien. Not a word from any CIC or any other office. MP, GCM notes, ATIPS.. nothing worked.
7th year, I receive a Cessation Application by CBSA under 1 (a). IRB rejected CBSA application. CBSA went to the Federal court for review. Federal court returned the case to IRB with instructions to hear the case ONLY under I (e). CBSA gave in. Case closed under 1 (e) , 2 months ago.
It took 10 years, gave me hypertension and diabetes but I didn't give in.
Now waiting for DM and oath. Hope that the ordeal ends soon.
Never give in. Do your homework. Stand your ground. Give it all you have.
Any ideas as to how push for the DM and Oath now please !!!
Applied for citizenship in 2015. Passed the citizenship test and having met all the requirements waited for the Oath Ceremony.
For 6 years, nothing. Nada. Rien. Not a word from any CIC or any other office. MP, GCM notes, ATIPS.. nothing worked.
7th year, I receive a Cessation Application by CBSA under 1 (a). IRB rejected CBSA application. CBSA went to the Federal court for review. Federal court returned the case to IRB with instructions to hear the case ONLY under I (e). CBSA gave in. Case closed under 1 (e) , 2 months ago.
It took 10 years, gave me hypertension and diabetes but I didn't give in.
Now waiting for DM and oath. Hope that the ordeal ends soon.
Never give in. Do your homework. Stand your ground. Give it all you have.
Any ideas as to how push for the DM and Oath now please !!!
Thank you for updating. Please keep sharing updates and good luck.Here is a message of hope for all those whose cases are stuck in a limbo for whatever reasons:
Applied for citizenship in 2015. Passed the citizenship test and having met all the requirements waited for the Oath Ceremony.
For 6 years, nothing. Nada. Rien. Not a word from any CIC or any other office. MP, GCM notes, ATIPS.. nothing worked.
7th year, I receive a Cessation Application by CBSA under 1 (a). IRB rejected CBSA application. CBSA went to the Federal court for review. Federal court returned the case to IRB with instructions to hear the case ONLY under I (e). CBSA gave in. Case closed under 1 (e) , 2 months ago.
It took 10 years, gave me hypertension and diabetes but I didn't give in.
Now waiting for DM and oath. Hope that the ordeal ends soon.
Never give in. Do your homework. Stand your ground. Give it all you have.
Any ideas as to how push for the DM and Oath now please !!!
While this case, Okeleke v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2024 CanLII 106280 (FC), here https://canlii.ca/t/k7n1s
is related to cessation it is a post-cessation, after the loss of PR status case.
A few of these situations have been referenced in this topic. But that is really more about the process involved in actually removing inadmissible Foreign Nationals, and about the pre-removal procedure in particular.
There are two distinct tangents. One is the post-cessation process itself, and the other is the Removal process more generally, including the pre-removal risk assessment. Frankly those subjects are more suited to the part of the forum where refugee matters are discussed generally. The problem is that gets into way, way more complicated stuff well outside the scope of citizenship issues.
To be clear, once a cessation determination is made based on reavailment, unless set aside by the Federal Court and then, in turn, the RPD on reconsideration dismisses the proceeding for cessation, the individual is NOT a PR, and NOT eligible for citizenship.
Moreover, based on the discussion in the podcast that @armoured references and links, it appears that citizenship applications are triggering cessation cases, that IRCC is screening the travel history of applicants who are PR-refugees and initiating cessation investigations if the PR-refugee has used a home country passport for travel (not clear whether that is typically limited to where the travel was to the home country). . . which can take five or six years. Since the FCA ruled that citizenship applications can be suspended during this time, it would clearly be a mistake for any PR-refugee to apply for citizenship if they have traveled using their home country passport within the five years they must report in the physical presence calculation. Best they can do is wait long enough to apply they will not need to list any travel using the home country passport.
I was very impressed with Doug Cannon. And his presentation in the podcast was very good, very illuminating.
That said, he is prone to advocacy overstatement, as zealous advocates tend to be. (He even admits that the article by him you reference and link in another post is more or less a rant . . . and indeed, his presentation in the podcast is far more informative than the article.) I totally agree with his criticisms of how cessation is applied to Permanent Residents, and what he criticizes was indeed a big factor in why I started this topic nearly a decade ago.
In regards to the advocate's tendency to overstate an argument, based on the statistics Meurrens referenced and other sources, it is unlikely that there are as few removals as Cannon suggests. Moreover, he suggested that up to three-fourths of the cessation cases involve individuals who will be able to avoid removal (such as those who can be sponsored for PR by a spouse, those who cannot be deported because they are from a country Canada has a moratorium on deporting people to, like Iran and Afghanistan), leaving one-fourth subject to removal. Even if that is not an advocacy-elevated perspective, I would not say that one-fourth plus (the plus due to not everyone who could potentially succeed in fighting removal will be able to do so, particularly given the logistics and costs involved) means that cessation "results in very few actual removals."
That's the gist of what this topic is about. And I repeat it often. For PR-refugees:
- do not renew or obtain home country passport
- do not use home country passport for travel
- do not travel to the home country,
- only travel with refugee travel document
I have discussed the Charter Challenges raised in the Gnanapragasam and Slepcsik in numerous posts above, including the following back in May:
https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/threads/refugee-status-cessation-and-prs-applying-for-citizenship.333455/page-60
and likewise have strongly suggested that no one rely on that to save them.
Note that Gnanapragasam is actually no longer part of the challenge since very similar to (if not the case) described by @xotica . . . Gnanapragasam getting a determination of cessation based on 108(1)(e) IRPA, which is the one ground for cessation that does not result in the automatic termination of PR status, rendering that case moot. I would caution that despite the success of the argument that cessation should be under this provision, and not under reavailment for example, for Gnanapragasam and for @xotica (assuming it is not the same case), generally the RPD (based on Cannon's presentation) and the Federal Courts (based on a number of FC cases I cite in pages above and affirmed by Cannon's comments) reject this.
I think the phrasing 'very few actual removals' was my misformulation, not Cannon's (to be fair to him). I believe what I meant was few removals when balanced against the cost, time, and potential policy 'benefit'. But that 'public policy lens' should not be used as a guideline to acceptable risk.
So to reiterate: for any PR/protected person, any statement that the numbers of actual removals is 'low' (it's not actually that small a number) should be discounted heavily, given the severity of the consequences. And as a post elsewhere in this thread notes: even 'winning' by fighting off removal or cessation if IRCC decides to pursue the matter means a VERY unpleasant and lengthy period of uncertainty. Don't risk it.
Some further observations:
There are two additional cessation decisions recently published by the Federal Court not mentioned here so far, and in both the RPD determination of cessation was set aside.
That probably looks like good news to some.
And either or both of these cases could go similar to how it went for others like @xotica where the RPD's reconsideration resulted in a decision that does not determine cessation of status on any of the grounds resulting in the automatic termination of PR status (either no reavailment, for lack of intent or voluntariness, or as in the Gnanapragasam and the @xotica cases cessation based on 108(1)e) which does not result in the loss of PR status).
There is, however, NO guarantee that either Azmat or Singh will get a favourable outcome, one that does not result in the loss of PR status when the RPD reconsiders their respective cases.
Which brings this back to the Borderlines podcast session with Douglas Cannon. And first the statistics that Steven Meurrens referenced. There was a big spike in cessation cases in 2019 that has not been matched as yet, but since the following year there has been a steady increase in cessation cases from year to year. And according to Meurrens, in 85 to 90 percent of the cases the RPD concludes cessation of status. Cannon, Meurrens, and Deanna Okun-Nachoff all seemed to concur in the view that the Canadian government is continuing to get more aggressive in pursuing cessation . . . despite how counter-productive and inconsistent it is with general immigration policies . . . and a very important aspect of this is the extent to which CBSA border officials screening returning PR-refugees, in addition to IRCC officials processing PR card applications and citizenship applications, are focused on identifying potential cessation cases.
Their demeanor indicated certainty in the assessment that travel using a home country passport is screened for PR card applicants as well as citizenship applicants (those who are PR-refugees).
Meanwhile the one-trip home cases definitely signal Port-of-Entry scrutiny. What we see in the published decisions, however, is still dominated by older cessation cases. The Azmat case I cite above, for example, is a one-trip home case, dating back to a trip in early 2017.
In regards to efforts to persuade the RPD that if they find cessation that should be done pursuant to section 108(1)(e) IRPA, not reavailment, which would allow the PR-refugee to keep PR status, I am not sure but in addressing this it may have been the Taji v. Canada, 2023 FC 1587, https://canlii.ca/t/k1f24 decision that Cannon was referring to. That was one of Cannon's wins (and maybe overlooked here, even though thanks to @scylla catching most new cessation cases we have seen most if not nearly all) based on an argument that the RPD should have considered cessation under section 108(1)(e) IRPA, not reavailment. Despite that win just last year, in the podcast Cannon characterized the section 108(1)(e) IRPA defense as rarely succeeding before the RPD or other Federal Courts (noting again, nonetheless, that the Gnanapragasam and the @xotica are cases illustrating success on this issue).
All this reinforces and reiterates how important it is that PR-refugees get the message: do not get a home country passport, do not use a home country passport, and absolutely do not travel to the home country. Not until they are Canadian citizens.
But over and above that, a big part of what Cannon was saying in the podcast, and @armoured focused some on this, was about the heavy cost paid by those who go through cessation proceedings regardless the outcome, and a heavy bureaucratic cost as well which is ultimately borne by all Canadians. And for what? In the Azmat case I cite above he had been in Canada well over two years (compare that to the scores of other PRs who do a "soft landing") before taking one trip home for 26 days because his sister was getting married and his mother's health included her compelling need to see him, when he had a Canadian PR card with which he could get back on a plane to return to Canada (like any other PR) . . . which hardly suggests there was fraud in the refugee claim or that this shows an intent to in fact reavail home country protection.
Why would just one trip home warrant such an effort to strip a Canadian PR of status?
Meanwhile there is a more recent (than Cannon's piece) CARL law review article about cessation, from early this year the articles is titled "Challenging The Loss Of Permanent Resident Status Resulting From Cessation Of Refugee Protection" and it is by Karo Dupuis and Hélène Mayrand. I think it can be found here: https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2024CanLIIDocs438#!fragment/zoupio-_Toc3Page20/ (copy and paste if link does not work)
This is less readable than Cannon's, in a far more-for-lawyers format, but it address specific issues and cites relevant case law, so it is a good resource . . . except it is a little dated already, given the status of what had been the Gnanapragasam charter challenge.
There are two additional cessation decisions recently published by the Federal Court not mentioned here so far, and in both the RPD determination of cessation was set aside.
Azmat v. Canada, 2024 FC 1725, https://canlii.ca/t/k7lkc (decided October 30, 2024)
Singh v. Canada, 2024 FC 1662, https://canlii.ca/t/k7fck (decided October 22, 2024)
That probably looks like good news to some.
And either or both of these cases could go similar to how it went for others like @xotica where the RPD's reconsideration resulted in a decision that does not determine cessation of status on any of the grounds resulting in the automatic termination of PR status (either no reavailment, for lack of intent or voluntariness, or as in the Gnanapragasam and the @xotica cases cessation based on 108(1)e) which does not result in the loss of PR status).
There is, however, NO guarantee that either Azmat or Singh will get a favourable outcome, one that does not result in the loss of PR status when the RPD reconsiders their respective cases.
Which brings this back to the Borderlines podcast session with Douglas Cannon. And first the statistics that Steven Meurrens referenced. There was a big spike in cessation cases in 2019 that has not been matched as yet, but since the following year there has been a steady increase in cessation cases from year to year. And according to Meurrens, in 85 to 90 percent of the cases the RPD concludes cessation of status. Cannon, Meurrens, and Deanna Okun-Nachoff all seemed to concur in the view that the Canadian government is continuing to get more aggressive in pursuing cessation . . . despite how counter-productive and inconsistent it is with general immigration policies . . . and a very important aspect of this is the extent to which CBSA border officials screening returning PR-refugees, in addition to IRCC officials processing PR card applications and citizenship applications, are focused on identifying potential cessation cases.
Their demeanor indicated certainty in the assessment that travel using a home country passport is screened for PR card applicants as well as citizenship applicants (those who are PR-refugees).
Meanwhile the one-trip home cases definitely signal Port-of-Entry scrutiny. What we see in the published decisions, however, is still dominated by older cessation cases. The Azmat case I cite above, for example, is a one-trip home case, dating back to a trip in early 2017.
In regards to efforts to persuade the RPD that if they find cessation that should be done pursuant to section 108(1)(e) IRPA, not reavailment, which would allow the PR-refugee to keep PR status, I am not sure but in addressing this it may have been the Taji v. Canada, 2023 FC 1587, https://canlii.ca/t/k1f24 decision that Cannon was referring to. That was one of Cannon's wins (and maybe overlooked here, even though thanks to @scylla catching most new cessation cases we have seen most if not nearly all) based on an argument that the RPD should have considered cessation under section 108(1)(e) IRPA, not reavailment. Despite that win just last year, in the podcast Cannon characterized the section 108(1)(e) IRPA defense as rarely succeeding before the RPD or other Federal Courts (noting again, nonetheless, that the Gnanapragasam and the @xotica are cases illustrating success on this issue).
All this reinforces and reiterates how important it is that PR-refugees get the message: do not get a home country passport, do not use a home country passport, and absolutely do not travel to the home country. Not until they are Canadian citizens.
But over and above that, a big part of what Cannon was saying in the podcast, and @armoured focused some on this, was about the heavy cost paid by those who go through cessation proceedings regardless the outcome, and a heavy bureaucratic cost as well which is ultimately borne by all Canadians. And for what? In the Azmat case I cite above he had been in Canada well over two years (compare that to the scores of other PRs who do a "soft landing") before taking one trip home for 26 days because his sister was getting married and his mother's health included her compelling need to see him, when he had a Canadian PR card with which he could get back on a plane to return to Canada (like any other PR) . . . which hardly suggests there was fraud in the refugee claim or that this shows an intent to in fact reavail home country protection.
Why would just one trip home warrant such an effort to strip a Canadian PR of status?
Meanwhile there is a more recent (than Cannon's piece) CARL law review article about cessation, from early this year the articles is titled "Challenging The Loss Of Permanent Resident Status Resulting From Cessation Of Refugee Protection" and it is by Karo Dupuis and Hélène Mayrand. I think it can be found here: https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2024CanLIIDocs438#!fragment/zoupio-_Toc3Page20/ (copy and paste if link does not work)
This is less readable than Cannon's, in a far more-for-lawyers format, but it address specific issues and cites relevant case law, so it is a good resource . . . except it is a little dated already, given the status of what had been the Gnanapragasam charter challenge.
Hello all, please I have a question. If you apply for refugee but got denied at all levels, later got permanent residency through humanitarian and compassionate grounds, requested CBSA for seized home country passports, renew passports two years later, travel for vacation to a different country ( not home country), apply for citizenship, all steps completed after interview with IRCC official. Almost three months after, prohibition changed from completed to in progress, should I be worried about cessation? Thank you in advance for your response
Assuming you became a PR pursuant to the H&C procedure, most likely you are not at risk of cessation. However, that depends on how YOU actually became a Canadian PR. (I do not know much about the H&C PR stream, and cannot say let alone affirm you became a PR based on an H&C application.)
PRs who are not refugees, who do not have protected person status, are not at risk of cessation of refugee or protected person status because they do not have such status to begin with. You cannot lose or have taken away a status you do not have.
Cessation is the termination of refugee or protected person status, not PR status. The termination of PR status is a collateral, separate operation of law. It is, however, an automatic consequence resulting from the cessation of refugee or protected person status.
Thus, again, if you obtained your PR status as a result of an H&C application for PR, the cessation provisions should have no impact on your status.
Notwithstanding that, it is my impression that PRs who obtained status pursuant to the H&C process can be at higher risk for elevated background/security screening similar to what many PR-refugees encounter, which can delay the citizenship grant process. This is probably in large part due to the nature of the individual's personal history, including in particular geographical locations (there tends to be increased cause to more closely screen people from certain parts of the world, especially conflict zones). So YOUR particular background and history, where you have lived, whatever political affiliations you have had, and of course the nature and duration of your travels, can influence the nature and scope of background screening and how long that takes if it involves non-routine processing.