OTTAWA, Ontario – Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board says it has rejected about half the asylum claims heard so far from people who've crossed the Canada-U.S. border since July.
But it says is has heard only a small fraction of the 8,000 or so claims that have been filed to date.
The head of the board's refugee protection division told a Parliament immigration committee Tuesday that 240 applications have received a final ruling and 373 other claims have been scheduled for hearings.
Shereen Benzvy Miller told the committee the rate of rejection is around 50 percent. That's in line with the historical acceptance rate for claims by Haitian nationals in past years, and the vast majority of the asylum seekers who have arrived in Quebec since the summer are Haitian.
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