As regular readers of CIC News may already know, lawyers are currently challenging two major immigration decisions in courts of law.

The first concerns the decision by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to eliminate backlogged applications to the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP). In 2012, CIC announced that it would return all FSWP applicants that had been submitted prior to 27 February, 2008. This amounts to almost 300,000 returned applications, along with over $130 million in processing fees.

The lead case, Tabingo v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), was dismissed by the Federal Court last year. A hearing at the Federal Court of Appeal has been scheduled for the week of June 23, 2014. The following actions have already taken place:

• The Appeal Books (which include evidence the parties are respectively relying upon) were due to be filed at the Federal Court of Appeal by December 20th, 2013.
• The legal arguments of the applicants’ lawyers were due at the Federal Court of Appeal by February 28th, 2014.
• Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s legal arguments are due at the Federal Court of Appeal by April 17th, 2014.

The second case, Stasenko v. MICC et al., challenges the Quebec government’s recent decision to retroactively apply changes to eligibility criteria for individuals who had already submitted their applications to the Quebec Skilled Worker Program (QSW). This decision was made on August 1, 2013, but affected many applications that had been submitted prior to this date.

The case is scheduled for a hearing in the Quebec Superior Court on May 7-8, 2014.

The outcomes of these cases will have significant meaning to the thousands of applicants who were affected by the governments’ actions.

Stay tuned to CIC News for future updates on these important cases.