“It’s only one month, it’s only the month of September. It would be difficult to draw conclusions,” said Gary Anandasangaree legal counsel with the Canadian Tamil Congress.
Figures released by the immigration and refugee board (IRB) show that for the month of September, the acceptance rate for Sri Lankan nationals applying for refugee status fell to 47% from 75% in August. Every other month in 2010 had acceptance rates above 80%.
“We are concerned though that it would be related to the public perception of the arrival of the MV Sun Sea. We would hope that the IRB would not be folding to public pressure,” Anandasangaree said.
Although the near 500 refugee claimants who arrived on the MV Sun Sea in August have been referred for a refugee hearing, it will be close to two years before their cases are finalized.
IRB spokesman Charles Hawkins denied public pressure would be at the heart of the decline in acceptance, but did say changing conditions in Sri Lanka were playing a role.
“Although each claim is decided on its own merits by applying the law to the facts, a recent survey of selected reasons in finalized negative decisions indicated that evidence of improved country conditions for the majority of Sri Lankan Tamils played a part in the rejection of the claims,” Hawkins told QMI Agency.
The United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees issued a report earlier this year indicating that conditions on the ground were improving and that a blanket approval for Tamils from Sri Lanka was no longer appropriate.
The 30-year civil war ended in May 2009. Since then refugee camps inside Sri Lanka have been shrinking as people return home and a small number of the more than 100,000 Tamil refugees in India have begun returning home.
Canada has consistently had one of the highest acceptance rates of Tamils seeking to flee Sri Lanka. While Canada accepted 90.7% of all Sri Lankan refugee claims in 2009, Britain accepted just 13.6% and France accepted just 24.1% of all claims.
brian.lilley@sunmedia.ca
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