Afshin Yazdani
Author
Table of Contents
December 8, 2025
The hidden mental health
crisis facing Canada's
immigration lawyers
By Afshin Yazdani
Law360 Canada (December 8, 2025, 11:44 AM EST) — Original source: Law360 Canada
Read the full article on the Law360 website
Over the past several years, the Canadian immigration system has been transformed by political volatility, rising refusal rates, increasing automation and a level of unpredictability unprecedented in modern practice. Policies change suddenly, pathways disappear without warning, caps are imposed overnight and entire programs fluctuate depending on the priorities of whichever minister happens to be in office that year.
What the public rarely sees — and what policymakers never acknowledge — is the profound impact this environment has on the mental health and well-being of immigration lawyers. We are becoming the invisible casualties of an increasingly unstable system.
A system under strain: Lawyers absorb the shock
At any moment, IRCC is managing over two million active applications, according to publicly available inventory data. And as of Dec. 31, 2024, nearly 942,300 applications were still stuck in the backlog — meaning they were processed beyond published service standards.
At the same time, Canada processed a staggering 5.13 million temporary resident applications from January to October 2024 alone. Even with record output, the backlog remains structurally embedded. The system is simply not designed to stabilize.
This instability lands squarely on lawyers. Every delay, every silence from IRCC, every inexplicable refusal becomes “your lawyer didn’t do enough.” Immigration practitioners become the front line absorbing the anxiety, fear and frustration generated by a system outside their control.
Rising refusal rates, shrinking pathways and the erosion of predictability
Between 2023 and 2025, refusal rates skyrocketed:
- Canadian study permits had a 60 per cent approval rate in 2023, dropping to 54 per cent by early 2024.
- By 2024-2025, refusal rates for study permits climbed to between 52 per cent and 62 per cent, with some months showing approval rates as low as 38 per cent — a dramatic collapse.
- The most common refusal reason remains the vague line: “not satisfied you will leave Canada at the end of your stay.” No meaningful explanation. No transparency. No clear path to improvement.
For clients, these refusals feel unjust. For lawyers, they are professionally haunting. You can prepare a perfect file and still receive a refusal that provides no legal basis for appeal, no substantive reasoning and no accountability from the decision-maker.
Clients rarely blame the visa officer. They blame us.
The politicization of immigration practice
Immigration is unlike any other area of law in Canada. In criminal, civil or administrative law, lawyers rely on statutes, legal tests and binding precedents. Although outcomes may vary, the rules are stable. The framework is predictable.
Immigration, by contrast, is driven by political agendas.
In the past five years alone, Canada has had five different immigration ministers, each with a different message to the public:
- “Canada needs more students.”
- “Canada needs fewer students.”
- “Canada needs skilled workers.”
- “Canada must reduce temporary residents.”
- “Canada needs essential workers.”
- “Canada must pause certain pathways.”
Reuters reported that in 2025, Canada imposed a second year of caps on student permits — reducing them to 437,000, down 10 per cent from the previous year and dramatically lower than 2023. Other reports show a 60 per cent decrease in new study arrivals between 2024 and 2025.
Yet lawyers continue to carry the burden of explaining whiplash-inducing policy reversals to desperate applicants whose lives are already in limbo.
Automation, AI and the new era of opacity
IRCC now uses various forms of automation:
- Advanced analytics systems (AI-driven triage tools) since at least 2022;
- Chinook, a spreadsheet-based review platform used by visa officers; and
- Private contractors and third-party technology partners.
IRCC publicly insists that these systems “do not make decisions” but merely organize files. But court-challenged cases such as
Mehrara v. Canada
, 2024 FC 1554 show that automation influences processing patterns, contributes to templated refusal language and obscures the decision-making trail.
For lawyers, this creates a Kafkaesque experience: you are ethically obligated to advocate for your client, but the legal reasoning behind refusals is increasingly inaccessible. You cannot cross-examine an algorithm.
You cannot meaningfully respond to a triage model you are not permitted to see.
The result is moral injury: you know your client deserved better, but you are fighting a machine with no face, no accountability and no duty to justify itself.
The toll on lawyers: Blame, complaints and financial threats
This combination of political volatility, high-stakes client vulnerability and opaque refusals has predictable consequences for lawyers:
- Clients blame lawyers for systemic failures.
After a refusal, many clients insist the lawyer must have done something wrong — even when refusal reasons are generic or AI-generated. - Refund demands often come with threats.
“If you don’t refund me, I will file a complaint with the law society.” - Some lawyers even face malpractice claims on contingency.
Certain litigators are now advertising “visa-refusal malpractice” actions — an alarming new trend that makes immigration lawyers uniquely exposed. - Law societies investigate when lawyers are most financially vulnerable.
Many practitioners face audits or investigations triggered by disgruntled clients — precisely when cash flow collapses because immigration processing slowdowns have dried up new retainers.
Immigration lawyers are caught between the public, the government and the regulator. We are blamed by all three.
What we know about lawyer mental health in Canada
There is extensive national data showing that Canadian lawyers are in a mental health crisis:
- The National Study on the Psychological Health of Legal Professionals (2022-2024) found alarming levels of depression, anxiety, burnout and suicidal ideation among lawyers.
- The Canadian Bar Association’s wellness survey confirms that lawyers across all fields exhibit severe distress, but especially those in emotionally demanding practices.
- The Law Society of B.C. specifically warns of “compassion fatigue” in areas involving vulnerable clients.
Although not immigration-specific, immigration lawyers fit into the highest-risk categories because:
- They serve traumatized, vulnerable populations (war, sanctions, asylum seekers, economic desperation).
- The legal framework is unstable and politically manipulated.
- Outcomes are highly discretionary and often opaque.
- Clients often experience a life-and-death level of emotional investment in the result.
- Lawyers internalize client trauma and feel personally responsible for failures beyond their control.
In short, immigration lawyers carry one of the heaviest emotional loads in the profession, with the fewest systemic protections.
My personal experience
As a lawyer practising in immigration, business and corporate law across Canada and the United States, I have seen firsthand how volatile policies destabilize not only clients’ futures but lawyers’ mental health.
- Clients in limbo push harder.
- Families under stress lash out.
- Stories get distorted.
- Refund demands multiply.
- Threats of regulatory complaints hang like a cloud over our daily work.
decision-making — remains unquestioned and unaccountable.
What must change
To protect both clients and lawyers, Canada must:
1. Increase transparency in decision-making
- Publish detailed reasons for refusals.
- Disclose how automated tools influence outcomes.
- Explain triage criteria and approval patterns.
2. Provide realistic public messaging
- Stop portraying Canada as endlessly open to newcomers when pathways are capped or shrinking.
3. Reform law society complaint triage
- Complaints weaponized as refund pressure should be screened early and rigorously to prevent abuse of the system.
4. Invest in mental health support for immigration lawyers
- If immigration continues to be a political experiment, the people managing the fallout need institutional support.
5. Stabilize long-term immigration policy
- Canada must stop resetting the entire system every time a new minister is appointed.
Conclusion
Canada’s immigration system is in crisis, but applicants are not the only ones suffering. Immigration lawyers — who are trying to help people navigate an increasingly chaotic landscape — are absorbing levels of emotional, financial and psychological pressure that threaten the sustainability of our profession.
If we do not acknowledge this now, we risk losing the very advocates who uphold fairness, dignity and legal integrity for newcomers.
The well-being of immigration lawyers is not a side issue — it is a necessary foundation for a functioning, just immigration system.
Original source: Law360 Canada
Read the full article on the Law360 website:
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