Ottawa’s Bogus Refugee Bill

Audrey Macklin
Friday, February 24, 2012

This commentary by Prof. Audrey Macklin and Lorne Waldman was first published on the Toronto Star website on Feb. 22, 2012.

Jason Kenney, the minister of Citizenship and Immigration, knows who the real refugees are. Or at least he knows which ones are “bogus”: refugee claimants from Mexico or Sri Lanka or Hungary are bogus. Bogus refugees include those who use smugglers to overcome the barriers to lawfully reaching countries like Canada which, by signing the refugee convention, have promised not to send back persons fleeing persecution.

Kenney’s system-abusing bogus refugees include those fleeing discrimination, oppression and hardship not quite horrific enough to satisfy the standards required by the jurisprudence defining and applying the refugee definition. Kenney does not mention that close to 40 per cent of the claimants were recognized as genuine refugees last year. Like falling crime statistics, that is an inconvenient truth for this government. Kenney manages to convert the fact that the system does not confer refugee protection on all who seek it into evidence of system failure.

Print symposium on Prof. Ayelet Shacharís "The Birthright Lottery" in Issues in Legal Scholarship

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Prof. Ayelet Shachar’s influential book, The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality, published by Harvard University Press, is the subject of a special symposium titled "Denaturalizing Citizenship" in the journal Issues in Legal Scholarship (2011: Volume 9, Issue 1).

SPINLAW Conference draws stellar panel for annual public interest law forum

Saturday, May 14, 2011

By Jacqueline Labine, 2L

“Canada 2020: The Future of Public Interest Law” was the 2011 theme for the annual Student Public Interest Network Legal Action Workshop (SPINLAW), held March 12, 2011 at the Faculty of Law.

Organized by students from the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall law schools, SPINLAW creates a forum for students, local activists and community members to share their experiences and perspectives on current social justice issues.

Prof. Kent Roach publishes new book, "The 9/11 Effect"

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Kent Roach - The 9/11 Effect

Prof. Kent Roach has published a new book, The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Prof. Ayelet Shachar's "Picking Winners" published in Yale Law Journal

Friday, July 8, 2011

Prof. Ayelet Shachar explores the use of citizenship as an Olympic recruiting tool in her new article "Picking Winners: Olympic Winners and the Global Race for Talent," currently published in the prestigious Yale Law Journal. 

Read the article on the Yale Law Journal website. 

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