Enhancing A2J at the Immigration Appeal Tribunal: Listening to Users & Front-Line Workers

This week’s blog is written by NSRLP Director Dr. Julie Macfarlane, and articling law student Maria Macasaet. Read Part Two, “Addressing User Needs,” here. 

The problem faced by the Immigration Appeal Division, or IAD, – which hears appeals regarding decisions on family sponsorship, removal orders and permanent residency – was expressed succinctly by its Deputy Chair, Suzanne Gilbert, in our first conversation.

“We have around 35% self-represented litigants. It’s difficult for them. I want to ensure that they have a meaningful and fair experience when they come to the tribunal.”

NSRLP has now completed an external review for the IAD of its “self-rep friendliness,” and made a number of recommendations for improvements and enhancements. Some of these relate to the work of the Early Resolution Officers who are the “front-line” workers who communicate with SRLs, whom we found eager to discover ways to improve the assistance they offer and to learn more about what SRLs needed and wanted. The remainder of our detailed recommendations relate to specific improvements in the accessibility and clarity of documents provided to appellants at the tribunal – standard form letters, guides, and other web-based summaries and tools. The management team at the IAD is now developing a plan to take these recommendations forward into their practice.

What we did

This was the first time that NSRLP had developed an evaluation plan with a tribunal, and we learned a lot which we will take forward into future work. Central to the methodology we used and which the IAD supported was to go directly to the user experience.

Dayna Cornwall and Moya McAlister, NSRLP’s professional staff, conducted multiple focus groups and some on-site interviews with the Early Resolution Officers to learn from them what they saw as the most important challenges for SRLs, and what additional supports they wanted to help them to serve the needs of SRLs better. This data was then shared with a Delphi Panel for their comments and observations.

We assembled a “Delphi Panel” of five individuals – three former SRLs (one now a law student), an immigration lawyer, and a third-year law student with experience in working with refugees and new immigrants. These 5 volunteers reviewed the IAD documents – including guides, letters, and other materials – that we were asked to evaluate, completing an assessment checklist for each one. In addition, both NSRLP professional staff and research assistants completed the same document reviews and checklists, providing additional perspectives from those both with and without legal training, and in all cases, experience in writing plain language law materials.

The user perspective

We believe that the user perspective (whether a former user of the IAD or simply a self-represented person in another court or tribunal) is critical to this type of practical, problem-solving evaluation. None of us imagined that we could change the IAD into a process that would be straightforward or easy for SRLs, but we all knew we could get it to a better place if the evaluation was properly attentive to what users said.

One of the members of our Delphi Panel was at that time a third year law student, now completing her articles in legal practice. Before she came to law school, Ria Macasaet represented herself at the IAD. She writes about what it meant for her to contribute to this evaluation, and how she felt her perspective could help:

“I hadn’t yet begun my legal education back when I was notified that a tribunal was going to be involved in my appeal. I can’t recall whether it even occurred to me that I could look them up online, or if it did occur to me, and I found nothing helpful, but I do recall repeatedly reading the scant paperwork I received to make sure I didn’t miss a thing.

Two years before, I had been refused re-entry into Canada after a Canadian embassy in Southeast Asia determined that I didn’t have the requisite permanent residence that gave me the right to travel back to Canada without a permanent residence card. This meant that I’d spent two years vacillating between patience in the process, and impatience at the delay. Only if I could win my appeal could I end my two-year stint abroad and return to the pursuit of my goals—one of which was obtaining a legal degree.

I had hoped the tribunal would let me appear in person, but that had been rejected on a basis I never really understood, and my matter was heard over the phone instead. Despite not having a lot of information about how the IAD operates and what they look for before my appeal was heard, I recall feeling fairly at ease during my hearing. The tribunal was friendly. They made sure I understood the consequences of my testimony. I was encouraged to be as forthcoming and candid as possible. In return, they were as forthcoming and candid as one could expect a government body to be.

When I was asked by Julie Macfarlane of the NSRLP to consider contributing to this evaluation, the answer was unreservedly, “of course.” Despite my level of education, grasp of the English language, and general interest in legal proceedings, I still felt great concern over what the hearing would involve and what was going to be required of me. I imagine this is to be expected when the outcome means a great deal to the trajectory of a person’s life, and to the people who love them. I appreciate that any way we could make the procedures simpler and the documents easier to comprehend will make a huge difference to all who have to navigate them without formal legal help. I am also very pleased to see the IAD looking for user input in order to make improvements, grateful that there seems to be an acknowledgement that the matters they hear are important—personal and life-altering—and that SRLs deserve to have a fighting chance to have their matters heard fairly and meaningfully.”

The second part of this blog describes what we found at the IAD, and what we recommended to them – you can find that post here.