Unrelated note: does anyone know how asylum seeker processing works in Canada? In Australia the average is about 100 or so days shy of a year and in Canada I believe it's short of a dozen days to process. Am interested to see how this works so I'll have a bit more ammo next time I debate the subject, which tends to bring out the inner-xenophobe in a lot of people down under, unfortunately.
The asylum (refugee, actually) program in Canada is seriously ****ed and currently being only-slightly-fixed by our present government. Refugee processing takes YEARS here. The initial applications are done at the border with a hearing within a set period (which I can't remember offhand, it's been three years since I worked there), but the actual process takes years and we virtually never detain anyone. True story: I once oversaw the deportation of false refugee claimants who had been in Canada for NINE years before we finally got them shoved on a plane.
Do not even think of showing our system up as a beacon of progressive immigration law. Our whole immigration system has its mechanics in need of serious overhaul. Until we imposed visas on them, Mexico and the Czech Republic were the two largest source countries of refugees (which were overwhelmingly found false or abandoned), despite that fact that thousands of legitimate refugees are sitting and waiting in camps in both the Middle East and Africa.
