Canada has approved nearly 25,000 asylum claims without security checks or conducting in-person interviews with applicants between 2019 and 2023, according to a report by the Toronto-based CD Howe Institute.
The report, authored by former Canadian senior immigration official, James Yousif, noted that the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) approved at least 24,599 asylum claims without meeting the applicants once, abandoning checks and procedures meant to detect fraud, criminality and security risks of applicants.
According to the report, the IRB streamlined vital security checks and replaced in-person hearings with automated file-assessments to fast track applicants from 24 “high-risk countries” — including Pakistan, Sudan and Russia — due to a severe backlog of pending asylum applications as well as a historic high in illegal border crossings and refugee claims.
The report said it made Canada’s asylum system one of the world’s most permissive but significantly more vulnerable to abuse and fraud.
Reacting to the report, Canadian immigration consultant, Kanwar Singh Sierah, said on X, “It’s not just 25,000 people… Canada’s asylum system has been hijacked by criminals and terror-linked elements as the easiest pathway to settle abroad for years.”
“These are only the cases caught being not interviewed and rubber-stamped… Now imagine the scale of approvals driven by politics, lobbying, and community pressure,” Kanwar Singh Sierah added in his post.
APPLICANTS FROM MANY COUNTRIES GIVEN ASYLUM STATUS WITHOUT HEARINGS, MEETINGS
According to a report by Canadian daily, National Post, Canada has had an asylum system in one form or another. According to the Government of Canada, its “asylum system helps people who have fled their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution”.
In order to claim asylum, applicants must be able to prove that returning to their home country would entail credible risk of persecution in the form of torture, cruel/unusual punishment and death.
The process involves a review by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) or Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). This is followed by a review by the IRB’s Refugee Protection Division, which determines if the applicant is in need of protection.
However, from 2017 onwards, the CD Howe Institute report states that the IRB started bypassing all these systems after a surge in asylum claims from that year, under a process called File Review.
As part of the File Review process, the IRB created a confidential Country List whose nationals could bypass oral hearings all together, and applicants are assessed solely on a written narrative submitted alongside their asylum claim.
“That means that a person from a country on the IRB’s Country List can enter Canada, make a claim for asylum, and receive a positive determination in the mail, without being asked a single question,” reads the report.
INDIVIDUALS FROM HIGH RISK COUNTRIES GIVEN ASYLUM WITHOUT CHECKS
Although the Country List is not publicly disclosed, the Yousif Report includes a 2024 version obtained through an Access to Information request. The list includes 24 countries and amounts to a concentration of states marked by criminality, terrorism or hostile relations with Canada. Among those included are Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Venezuela, Eritrea and North Korea.
The rationale for the list, according to the report, is that fragile or failed states are more likely to produce genuine asylum seekers, unlike countries such as India or Mexico, which account for a disproportionately high number of rejected claims.
However, the report attests that this approach means that Canada is deliberately lowering scrutiny on nationals of countries where organised crime and terrorist networks are most likely to exploit a low-threshold asylum system.
The report cited an example from 2024, when a Pakistani national was arrested in Quebec while his asylum claim was still under review, after allegedly plotting a terrorist attack against Jewish targets in New York City. Iran is also included, despite long-standing concerns that Canada has served as a refuge for senior members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
BOOST IN ASYLUM ACCEPTANCE, AND SYSTEMATIC ABUSE
According to James Yousif’s report, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), streamlined policy made Canada have one of the world’s most liberal asylum programmes. It states that Canada has an asylum approval rate of 80%, far above other Western countries. For comparison’s sake, Germany rejects 40% of all asylum claims, while for Sweden and Ireland it is 60% and 70%, respectively.
According to the report, in 2019, when the File Review process began, Canada’s acceptance was 64.6%, before rising to 71% and then the current 80%. In absolute numbers, Canada processed 6,000 asylum claims a year in the 2010s with a rejection rate of 40%. Now, the report states that the number is 173,000 in 2024 alone, while the figure for 2025 was 57,440 claims processed between January and June.
Alongside higher asylum acceptance rates, the report also claims that Canada’s asylum programme is now more vulnerable than ever to systematic abuse. The report cites data from the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), which states the government investigated an average of over 9,000 suspected immigration fraud cases per month in 2024.
Senior officials in Canada’s Liberal party-led government have repeatedly warned in recent years that Canada’s asylum system was being exploited. In 2018, then immigration minister Ahmed Hussen said large numbers of Nigerians were using US tourist visas to cross illegally into Canada to seek asylum, prompting him to travel to Nigeria to discourage such claims.
In 2024, his successor, Marc Miller, called it “alarming” that thousands of foreign students sought asylum as soon as their visas expired, warning the system was being used as a “backdoor entry into Canada”.
The Yousif Report detailed multiple risks posed by File Review, warning that it leaves Canada vulnerable to infiltration by criminal networks, terrorists and fraudulent migrants. Its central concern, however, is that eliminating in-person interviews removes the most effective safeguard for preventing the asylum system from becoming a national security risk.
