I truly appreciate your detailed response. I will keep you posted about my situation.
Refugee status cessation and PRs applying for citizenship
- Thread starter dpenabill
- Start date
Hi. I was wondering why they keep telling do not renew your home country passport and travel with that passport even to the third country. If it’s not a problem better not to deal with refugee travel document. So request or renew home country passport and travel with that.
I am just asking to know about that more. Thank you.
That’s the reality. I’ve heard a lot of people using their home country passport without any issues. And no one asks a question, they become citizens. Personally, I would never risk it, and also do not recommend to do so.
Because of paragraph 121 of the UNHCR handbook, the definitive source for everything related to refugees.
Link : https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/legacy-pdf/5ddfcdc47.pdf
It says this (listing 120 too for context purposes) :
"120 : If the refugee does not act voluntarily, he will not cease to be a refugee. If he is instructed by an authority, e.g. of his country of residence, to perform against his will an act that could be interpreted as a re‑availment of the protection of the country of his nationality, such as applying to his Consulate for a national passport, he will not cease to be a refugee merely because he obeys such an instruction. He may also be constrained, by circumstances beyond his control, to have recourse to a measure of protection from his country of nationality. He may, for instance, need to apply for a divorce in his home country because no other divorce may have the necessary international recognition. Such an act cannot be considered to be a “voluntary re‑availment of protection” and will not deprive a person of refugee status.
121. In determining whether refugee status is lost in these circumstances, a distinction should be drawn between actual re‑availment of protection and occasional and incidental contacts with the national authorities. If a refugee applies for and obtains a national passport or its renewal, it will, in the absence of proof to the contrary, be presumed that he intends to avail himself of the protection of the country of his nationality. On the other hand, the acquisition of documents from the national authorities, for which non‑nationals would likewise have to apply – such as a birth or marriage certif‑
icate – or similar services, cannot be regarded as a re‑availment of protection."
The key here is that, applying for a home country passport by the refugee's own volition is a presumption that someone no longer needs protection from their home country, as it says in 121. Yeah, there are circonstances that need to be considered, and stripping someone of their refugee status will not be done lightly and without due process, but the source is very clear, its absolutely ground to reavailment and an invitation to end up in a court defending the status...
@Seym referenced the UNHCR provisions for refugees . . .
. . . more generally, the UNHCR provisions for refugees govern the system or arrangement pursuant to which those fleeing danger can seek and obtain refuge in and protection from a state/nation other than their home nationality (or where they were residing), in significant if not large part based on the understanding that their home state will not protect them or the home state itself is posing the danger being fled. This refugee protection ceases if the refugee "reavails" the home country's protection. No more need for refugee protection.
Which makes sense. The refugee no longer needs the new state's refuge, no longer needs the new state's protection, because they have "reavailed" home country protection.
This goes off the rails in regards to Canadian PRs.
It is not just that cessation itself applies to Permanent Residents who became a PR via the refugee stream. Until December 2012 cessation of protected person status had no effect on the individual's Canadian PR status. They were PRs just like every other PR, subject to the same rules of inadmissibility (residency obligation, criminality, security). Live in Canada and stay out of criminal trouble, status is secure. So, prior to December 2012 no government body pursued formal cessation of those refugees who had become Canadian PRs. No point: so what if they did? If they did, it would not have had any impact on the individual's status as a PR. So what the individual is no longer a refugee under protection pursuant to the UNHCR system? They are still a PR.
The issue is that the Harper/Conservative government added a provision to IRPA, which took effect December 2012 (but until around 2015 was largely overlooked by anyone not directly affected), that automatically terminates PR status if they had obtained PR status as a refugee and their refuge status ceased under the UNHCR provisions (there is one exception; and there is only one of the provisions that has been regularly applied with real teeth, and that is the reavailment of home country protection provision).
No notice, no hearing, no process at all in regards to the termination of PR status. If the CBSA prosecutes the case and the RPD determines a PR-refugee's status as a protected person has ceased based on reavailment of home country protection, that automatically (by operation of law) also terminates the individual's PR status. No H&C relief.
There was a lot of noise about this around ten years ago. I started this topic August 2015 when I saw cases in which applicants for citizenship were subject to cessation rather than granted citizenship, when at the time many were advising PR-refugees that they needed to get a valid passport to submit with a citizenship application. That is, not only were some posting such advice in forums like this, but the conventional wisdom in this and other forums was for PR-refugees to do the very act, obtain a home country passport, for which their status could be terminated, thus taking away not just their eligibility for citizenship but any status to remain in Canada. Not good. Needed to get the word out.
MP Kwan (NDP last I looked) introduced a bill into Parliament soon after Harper got fired and the Liberals formed a majority government.
To admit an example of how utterly wrong I too often am, I thought the odds were good that the Liberals would roll this back some, and then there is what I posted about what I thought was the worst it could go, back in October 2015 shortly after the election, Liberals getting a majority government:
That's not how it went. My bad.
(I have excuses; I always have excuses: the Liberal government had already clearly signaled it would immediately cease enforcing many of the more severe provisions Harper had enacted, like the required intent to continue residing in Canada provision, and to anyone with a sense of balance, the termination of PR status in Harper's law for just visiting family in the home country seemed just the sort of thing where the Liberals would apply the brakes. They didn't.)
The new Liberal majority proceeded to roll back several Harper-era provisions, what many considered to be overly-strict provisions (like allowing presence credit for pre-PR-days in Canada, reducing the presence requirement to three rather than four years, and repealing the Harper era provision that would allow the government to revoke citizenship based on specified crimes, even the citizenship of those born in Canada in some circumstances) but skipped this one . . . and, based on the Federal Court decisions we have seen over the last few years, under a Liberal government authorities have actually continued to fairly aggressively apply cessation to PR-refugees. And IRCC in particular, it appears, has been using the citizenship application process (in which applicants must disclose all passports and all countries traveled to for the previous five years) to spot, to in effect catch PR-refugees who have engaged in conduct that could be grounds for cessation based on reavailament.
Traveled to your home country? Went home for your sister's wedding? to be by your father's side during surgery? Apply for citizenship and get deported instead.
Frank observation: It is highly, highly unlikely this will be rolled back in its application to PR-refugees anytime in the near future. I am far more confident of this forecasting than my erroneous guess nearly a decade ago. After all, both social and political trends appear to be driving hard in the get tough direction (fast enough lately, it sometimes seems, to constitute stunt driving . . . I know, sorry, this is serious stuff and I should not make light of it).
The main bug in this system is the presumption of an intent to reavail home country protection. Here is where there is a huge, huge practical difference between someone who is a protected person relying on a country's protection because they are a person in need of protection, and a person who has become a Canadian, a Canadian Permanent Resident, someone who has a safe permanent home in Canada and who, if visiting the home country, for example, can run to the airport and get on a plane to leave a dangerous country to return to Canada because they are a Canadian with PR status.
Which leads to the last cited decision above. It all but puts a nail in the coffin of the did-not-know-the-consequences defense, not it alone as it is one in a long string of cases that have been minimizing the impact of not knowing the consequences in assessing the PR-refugee's intent. Logically it is impossible for a person to intend to do something they do not know they are doing. The Federal Court of Appeal has said that what matters is what the individual knew, not what they should have known or what a reasonable person would know, but what they actually knew themselves. That now, apparently, poses little or no hurdle to determining the person intended to reavail themselves of home country protection, justifying not just the cessation of their protected person status but in doing so terminating their PR status.
The thing is, that last discussed FC decision reeks of illogic and is as unintelligible as many of the decisions the Federal Court often and quite routinely overrules as unintelligible.
Which I have been meaning to discuss further . . . when I get to it.
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