Current as of August 2026. Refugee law is changing quickly right now. Please confirm the current rules before you act on anything in this post.
Making the claim is the part most people prepare for. You tell an officer at the airport, at the land border, or at an inland IRCC office that you need Canada’s protection. You answer questions, you hand over your documents, and eventually you are given a stack of paper and told you will hear from the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Then nothing seems to happen for a long time.
That waiting period is the longest part of the process, and it is where most claims are quietly won or lost. Here is what actually happens after your claim goes in, and what you should be doing at each stage.
First, an officer decides whether your claim can be heard at all
Before anything else, an officer with the Canada Border Services Agency or IRCC decides whether your claim is eligible to be referred to the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) of the Immigration and Refugee Board.
This is not a decision about whether you are a refugee. Nobody has looked at your story yet. It is a narrower question: is the RPD allowed to hear you?
Several things can bar a referral. A previous refugee claim in Canada, protection already granted in another country, the Safe Third Country Agreement, and findings of serious criminality or security inadmissibility have all been grounds for years. Two more were added in 2026 under Bill C-12.
A claim made more than one year after your first entry into Canada after June 24, 2020, will not be referred, even if you left Canada and came back. Neither will a claim made more than 14 days after crossing the Canada-US land border between ports of entry.
If you receive a letter from IRCC saying your claim may not be eligible for referral, do not put it aside. These letters normally invite a written response, and that response is your one chance to show the officer that the rule does not apply to you. Dates of entry are frequently recorded incorrectly, and the difference between two entry dates can decide whether you get a hearing.
If your claim genuinely cannot be referred, you are not out of options. A Pre-Removal Risk Assessment assesses the same risk through a different process, and a humanitarian and compassionate application may be available depending on your circumstances. Both are worth discussing with a lawyer before your removal becomes enforceable.
If your claim is referred, read every page you were given
Claimants who are referred receive a Confirmation of Referral, a Refugee Protection Claimant Document, and usually a conditional removal order. That last document alarms people, but it is standard. It does not become enforceable while your claim is in progress.
What matters most in that stack are the deadlines and the address. The Board will send your Notice to Appear and other correspondence to the address it has on file. If you move and do not tell both the RPD and IRCC in writing, you may never learn your hearing date, and a missed hearing can end your claim through abandonment. This is one of the most common and most avoidable ways claims fail.
The Basis of Claim form is your case
If you claimed inland, you submitted your Basis of Claim (BOC) form with your claim. If you claimed at a port of entry, you were given the form to complete and return to the RPD within a short window after referral. The exact deadline is printed on your paperwork, and the RPD has at times extended it by practice notice, so work from your own documents rather than from what a friend was told.
Take this form seriously. Your BOC narrative is the document the Board member will hold in front of them while you testify, and every answer you give at the hearing will be measured against it. Details left out, dates that do not line up, and events described one way in the form and another way at the hearing are the leading cause of negative credibility findings. You can amend your BOC later, but each amendment invites a question about why the first version was different.
Write it in your own words, in as much detail as you can manage, and get it reviewed before it goes in. Our post on common mistakes in refugee claims that lead to refusal covers this in more depth.
Working and getting medical care while you wait
Refugee claimants can apply for a work permit, and you will need to complete an immigration medical examination as part of that process. Start the medical early, because it is a common source of delay.
Health coverage comes through the Interim Federal Health Program, which covers basic and emergency care and some prescription medication while your claim is pending. Keep your claimant document with you when you see a provider.
Use the wait to build the record
The gap between referral and hearing is measured in months, and often longer. Do not treat it as dead time. This is when your evidence gets assembled: identity and travel documents, police or court records, medical or psychological reports, letters from witnesses who can confirm what happened to you, and country condition evidence that supports the specific risk you describe.
Two practical points. Anything not in English or French needs a human translation with a translator’s declaration. Machine translations are not accepted. And under the current RPD rules your documents must be filed ten days before the hearing, so the real deadline for gathering evidence is well before the hearing date on your notice.
The hearing
RPD hearings are private and recorded. In the room, or on the video call, there will be a Board member, an interpreter if you need one, your counsel, and sometimes a representative of the Minister if the government has decided to intervene.
You will testify. The member will ask about your narrative, about the timing of your departure, about why you did not go elsewhere or claim protection sooner, and about anything in your documents that seems inconsistent. The questioning can feel adversarial even when the member is not hostile. Preparation is what makes the difference here, and it means going through your own narrative with counsel until you can speak to it clearly under pressure.
A decision may be given orally at the end of the hearing or reserved and sent in writing later.
After the decision
If your claim is accepted, you become a protected person and can apply for permanent residence.
If it is refused, the deadlines are short and unforgiving. Depending on your circumstances you may be able to appeal to the Refugee Appeal Division, and a notice of appeal is due within fifteen days of receiving the written reasons. Judicial review at the Federal Court is available with leave. We cover both routes in what happens if the Refugee Protection Division refuses your claim and what to do if the Refugee Appeal Division dismisses your appeal.
The process described above is being rewritten
Bill C-12 has been in force since March 2026. In June 2026 the government published a further set of proposed regulations that would change much of the middle of this process: a fixed deadline to submit a complete application after making a claim, a requirement to file hearing documents much earlier than the current ten-day rule, work permits tied to having submitted your documents and completed your medical, and abandonment of a claim if the claimant leaves Canada before a decision.
Those regulations were not in force when this post was written. If you have a claim in the system, the safest approach is to work from the deadlines on your own paperwork and to check before assuming that anything you read online, including this post, still reflects the current rules.
Talk to us before the deadlines start running
Most of the damage we see in refugee files was done early: a BOC narrative filed without review, an eligibility letter that went unanswered, an address that was never updated. None of it is easy to undo later.
If you have made a claim, or you are about to, book a consultation and we will go through where your file stands and what needs to happen next. You can also read more about how we work on refugee matters on our refugee law page.