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FIRST READING: Overwhelmed by asylum claims, Ottawa coped by ignoring security protocols

25,000 people from some of the most dangerous countries on earth received refugee status without ever meeting a government employee

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FIRST READING: Overwhelmed by asylum claims, Ottawa coped by ignoring security protocols Back to video

The Toronto-based C.D. Howe Institute may typically be an economics think tank, but this week it dropped a shocking exposé of the Canadian immigration system.

As Canada became overwhelmed with a surge of illegal border-crossers and asylum claimants in the years after 2017, the response of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada was to eliminate most of its screening protocols.  

Security checks were abandoned, review processes were automated, and nearly 25,000 people were given refugee status without a single government employee having met them in person. At the precise moment that record numbers of foreign nationals were trying to secure Canadian residency via the asylum system, the federal government slashed all its usual controls to weed out fraudsters, human traffickers and terrorists.  

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What’s more, the C.D. Howe report was authored by an insider; James Yousif, a former director of policy at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

Below, the details of how Canada opened wide its borders at the exact moment they were most under stress.

24,599 people were accepted as refugees without a single in-person interview

Canada has had some sort of refugee system since the end of the Second World War. And the most explosive takeaway from the Yousif report is that, for the first time, the Canadian government is now granting refugee........

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