Toronto Immigration Law, Toronto Refugee, Levine Associates, Blog

The Trumpist Contagion?   The sequence of facts I am about to reveal sounds so far fetched, so Orwellian in its bureaucratic absurdity that one would assume I am either writing a piece of fiction or describing a sequence of events in some far off dysfunctional country in Africa or the Middle East.  Sadly, this […]

  Now that Donald Trump has become the official Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, it is time to consider what impact his election might have on Immigration to Canada. 1)      Clearly, Trump has committed himself to removing millions of illegal Mexicans from the United States.  One would expect some percentage of these immigrants to attempt […]

Introduction of New Law In December 2012 Immigration completely revamped the refugee system.  Perhaps the most dramatic change, was to statutorily require that most new refugee claims complete within 60 days of the claimant’s arrival in Canada.  This timeline compares with the 1 to 3 year waits claimants faced prior to the introduction of the […]

  Understanding the “First Safe Country” Concept and Why it’s Obsolete Until the Syrian refugee crisis, it was accepted by those who practice refugee law that a claimant’s failure to make a claim in the First Safe Country—also known as Forum Shopping—could be interpreted by decision makers as evidence that a claimant lacked a subjective […]

Has Trump’s bluster gotten you interested in Canada? The coming American presidential election has given way to a great deal of interest on the topic of “moving to Canada”. The question of whether this is feasible can only be answered on a case-by-case basis. There are a number of different avenues for immigration to Canada, […]

Until recently, refugees in Canada have correctly assumed that a positive determination would entitle them to remain in Canada permanently. In fact, until legislative changes in 2012, once a refugee obtained permanent resident status, refugees were guaranteed the right to remain in Canada permanently unless the claimant violated Canadian law, which in some cases resulted […]

In an interview on CTV Express today Mr. Levine discussed a recent article in the Taiwan Times which reported that a massive smuggling ring was recently discovered operating in Taiwan.  The discovery of the ring was a result of an international effort involving authorities from Taiwan, Canada and Australia.  The smuggling ring had been sending […]

What is a Humanitarian and Compassionate Application? Immigration terminology is often arcane and complicated and no more so than when I was asked whether I was able to do an “agency” application for a client.  After some further questioning I realized that my client had misheard the term “H&C” which when spoken quickly sounds much […]

Given the shocking amount of legislative change, both enacted and proposed by the Harper government over the past number of years I remain both puzzled and amazed that the government has not sought to bring some legislative clarity to the area of Citizenship law in Canada.  Some background is necessary in order to understand how […]

Immigration lawyer Shelley Levine of Levine Associates has succeeded in a Judicial Review application before the Federal Court, to overturn an Immigration and Refugee Board decision which found that there was no evidence of recent persecution of Christians in Guangdong Province.  The case is only the most recent instance of the Board’s failure to properly assess […]