Practicing Exclusively in Canadian Immigration Law
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Who we are
Steven Meurrens is a Partner at Larlee Rosenberg, a highly regarded law firm in Vancouver, British Columbia that practices exclusively in Canadian immigration law.
Practice Areas
Our firm practices almost exclusively in Canadian immigration matters, including work permit applications, provincial nominations, skilled worker applications, and more.
Immigration Blog
Duress and Inadmissibility to Canada
The Supreme Court of Canada has "clarified" the elements of the duress defence. The defence is important because it can affect admissibility. For example, in Guerra Diaz v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2013 FC 88, the Federal Court of Court determined that the Immigration and Refugee Board improperly applied the test of whether duress applied, and ordered a new hearing by a different member. Duress and Inadmissibility It is basically trite law that where there is duress, then a person does not have the mens rea do either commit a crime or be a member in a group that renders the individual inadmissible to Canada. In Jalloh v. Canada (Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2012 FC 317, the Federal Court stated that: In my view, it is preferable to consider the evidence of membership along with the evidence of coercion in determining whether there are reasonable grounds to believe the person genuinely was a member of the group. One way of looking at this issue is to regard evidence of duress as defeating the mens rea of membership (Thiyagarajah v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2011 FC 339). Accordingly, evidence relating to duress must be considered along with the evidence relating to ...
Borderlines Podcast #216 – Inside IRCC: Answers to Representatives’ Emails #1
Steven Meurrens and Deanna Okun-Nachoff review several responses from IRCC’s Immigration Representatives’ Mailbox, where immigration representatives ask questions about how Canadian immigration law and various immigration programs are interpreted and applied. This correspondence was obtained through an Access to Information Act request. Topics discussed include: (1) whether rental assistance counts as social assistance for sponsorships; (2) study permit requirements for children of protected persons; (3) maintained status and “rolling” extension applications; (4) whether marriages count for immigration purposes if the commissionaire is joining remotely; (5) criminal rehabilitation applications and concurrent filings; (6) adding newborn children after COPRs are issued; (7) travelling to Canada by land with an expired PR Card; (8) whether C11 entrepreneur work permits count toward Express Entry; (9) foreign work experience performed remotely from inside Canada; (10) Express Entry NOC code refusals and category-based selection issues; (11) non-accompanying spouses and CRS score maximization; (12) proof of settlement funds in foreign currencies; and (13) PR portal travel complications and eCOPRs. We also answer a live listener question about ATIPs and CBSA.
The Return of Incomplete Applications
I have previously written in this blog about how Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada ("IRCC') has adapted an exceptionally strict approach to returning applications for incompleteness. I have also written in Policy Options about how frustrating this approach can be, because one of its main purposes appears to be to allow politicians to boast about reduced processing times, while ignoring the fact that the experience of individuals who are actually applying is actually often longer than previously. I wrote: The current rigid triage system distorts a fair comparison of processing times. Suppose an individual applies to sponsor a spouse to immigrate to Canada and forgets to include in one of the forms the city where a non-accompanying brother was born. Previously, processing might have been delayed by two to three months while IRCC contacted the family, informed them of the mistake and requested they provide the information. Now, IRCC would instead return the application one to two months after it is submitted, and the family would have to resubmit. If some supporting documents have expired, they may have to reobtain them, and the process can easily take several months. Under the previous system, this delay would have added two to ...
