10/21/2025
What are common reasons why asylum applications get rejected in Canada?
Usually by the fact you showed up!
Here’s the thing…Canada isn’t a walk to the country next door. People also confuse refugee and asylum. Refugees are fleeing immediate, life threatening circumstances in their home country. Usually some kind of war. A refugee’s first priority is to get to the first safe place they can find. It doesn’t matter where but is usually the country or countries around theirs. Once foot crosses border, you’re safe.
Canada, because it has two oceans and only one country border, is not a place for refugees. It takes effort to get to Canada and that is almost always after immediate safety has been achieved. Canada does have a refugee resettlement program but note the phrase “resettlement”. It is always applied for by a person who has been displaced and hasn’t or isn’t able to go back home for some time. It is after the immediate need has been dealt with.
So people coming to Canada, unless by prior arrangement by the above program, are not refugees. That leaves asylum.
Asylum is different. Asylum is when your own government is persecuting you. For ethnic, cultural, religious, tribal, political reasons. It may be done by government forces or by those sympathetic to those goals but you are in danger of your life if you remain because someone is coming after you because of who or what you are. That is the definition used in international law.
It is not a generalized fear of violence, lack of opportunity, poverty and so on. Gangs roaming about and engaging in extortion and murder is not the government coming after you. There is a difference.
Asylum, like being a refugee, sees you fleeing for safety. Again, often to the first safe place you can reach. So what is the problem with that in regards to Canada?
The aforementioned two oceans and one border.
To reach Canada you’re going to have to fly or swim if you aren’t coming up from the United States. Which means you’re going to have to have the means to do so and have time to plan that travel. Canada also requires visas for people from countries most likely to seek asylum. People who don’t need visas to Canada don’t seek asylum because they don’t qualify for it. They come from stable, prosperous places. No American, for example, can claim asylum in Canada.
So by the time you get to Canada, you will have had plenty of safety where you were previously in order to make that process happen. It calls into question the legitimacy of any asylum claim because you had time and money enough to fly around the world. Why weren’t you able to seek asylum near where you were?
Makes it hard to claim immediate threat to life and limb, now doesn’t it?
What about walking across the US border? Well, there were those that did that. Notably at Roxham Road.
The US and Canada have an agreement called the “Safe Third Country Agreement”. Basically, that agreement states that a person entering the US or Canada cannot claim asylum in the neighboring country as either country is a safe place. The agreement is meant to discourage “asylum shopping” where those seeking to claim such would go to a country of their preference for the best deal rather than where they were. However, the agreement had a loophole as it only applied to ports of entry like an airport or land crossing with border guards, not to anywhere on the border. Roxham Road was a road that led to the Canadian border through upper New York state and people would walk across it there to claim asylum in Canada.
Around 94% of all asylum claims made through Roxham Road were ultimately rejected. Many people would enter the USA illegally and avoid US authorities to claim first entry into Canada specifically for asylum purposes. In 2023, the agreement was amended to close Roxham Road and irregular entry for good because hundreds of thousands of people abused it.
So the most common reason claims for asylum get rejected is the person isn’t really a candidate for it. Most asylum claimants are economic migrants. They are seeking “a better life” by any means available and even a rejected asylum claim in Canada gets one years of living and working in Canada in the meantime.
Given that getting to Canada is expensive and that calls into question the actual rationale for the claim. More than half of all asylum claims in Canada get rejected. Problem is, a lot of people conflate asylum with refugee claims and they are not the same. At present, Canada is cracking down on immigration due to abuse of its system across the board. The more people seeking to abuse the system for their own ends, the harder it becomes for those with legitimate claims to succeed.
But bottom-line, most asylum claims are rejected because those claiming it aren’t actually in fear of persecution by their government and are often just engaging in economic migration.
