As
a firm who handles immigration litigation, one of our long time challenges has
been to respond to clients who are told that pursuing litigation of negative
decisions by immigration officials is futile. We have always stated that it is
not. Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) does make mistakes, and the following article by
Nicholas Keung in the Toronto Star - ‘High error rate’ found in Canada’s immigration
processing - proves it. To read the full article:
Of
particular interest is this quote by a union representative for the CIC
employees - “The government keeps
changing its policies. It is a challenge to keep up with all the changes that
come every other week". We
have argued that precise fact before the
Federal Court recently. We have long argued that these constant changes to policy are
detrimental to the Rule of Law. It goes
against the fundamental Canadian value of good governance, as such changes
bring uncertainty and confusion not only for the applicants and counsel, but
clearly to those charged with administering
the law as well.
It
has long been a contention of luminary legal
scholars such as Joseph Raz and
Lon Fuller that such actions are in breach of the Rule of Law, and lead to the failure
of legal systems (Lon L. Fuller The Morality of Law (Revised ed., Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1969) 33–38). Professor Fuller criticized such government actions and believed that "inconsistent
adjudication", failure to properly publicize changes in the law, rules that are hard to
understand, retrospective legislation, contradictions in the law, unreasonable
demands on the applicants, and inconsistency between the stated intent of
legislation and the decisions made by those charged with making decisions under
the legislation, all lead to the failure of a legal system. This article makes
it clear that many of these criticized
government actions seem to be happening with immigration here in Canada. So the question is: despite all of its touted successes, is the system on the way to failure
if it keeps on its present course ?
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