Would-be newcomers caught in legal quagmire

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Would-be newcomers caught in legal quagmire


By Tobi Cohen, Postmedia News July 13, 2012 6:06 PM

OTTAWA — A group of would-be immigrants, who successfully sued the government over processing delays, will soon learn whether the bulk of them will remain out of luck in terms of their quest to come to Canada thanks to a new law that allows Citizenship and Immigration to toss out more than a quarter-of-a-million old applications.

The Federal Court ruled last month, just two weeks before Bill C-38 became law, that the government must process all the applications it takes into the system and that the delays, some going back nine years, were unjustified.

The court ordered the government to finalize the lead litigant's case by Oct. 14.

While the court didn't issue separate rulings for each of the 900 litigants involved, their lawyer Tim Leahy said an agreement was struck with the government in February to apply the principles in the lead case to the others.

But that was before Bill C-38 and in a document filed in Federal Court this week, the government argued the new law — eliminating some 280,000 unassessed federal skilled worker applications received prior to February 27, 2008 and refunding their $130 million in application fees — trumps their agreement.

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