2.3.1 Applications in Process Stateless persons have other avenues through which their status can be regularised from within Canada, including an application for permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds (H&C), a pre-removal risk application (PRRA) (before being removed from Canada), or an application to the Minister for discretionary grant of citizenship. Depending on the type of application, stateless persons may be entitled to some of the rights associated with residency. For example, detained stateless persons or those who have submitted a PRRA are eligible for health care.45 Between 2016 and 2017, 12 PRRA applications were submitted by stateless persons. Only three were approved during this timeframe and the remaining are pending as of July, 2018. In the same time period, 128 permanent resident applications on H&C grounds were made by stateless persons out of which 54 applications were still pending as of July 2018. Since 2015, there have been three applications requesting a discretionary grant of citizenship based on statelessness under the special and unusual hardship grounds. One of them was submitted after the 2017 amendment to the Citizenship Act.46 The first two applications were rejected and the last one is pending.47 Processing times for the below types of applications vary. For example, H&C decisions can take around 18-24 months to process, but sometimes longer depending on the case. For citizenship applications, it takes up to a year. 48 This is troublesome for stateless people who have limited employment opportunities due to their lack of permanent status in Canada, especially as H&C applications appear to be the most effective remedy for stateless people to obtain permanent status. Richard arrived in Canada from abroad when he was an adolescent. His parents were unable to take care of him so they asked a family member to take care of him in Canada. “No, it [the adoption] was not registered or anything. All I know is that… what I was told, what I remember is that my birth parents could not look after any one of us, because I think my father was an alcoholic […], so they ended up giving each of our godparents one kid each to look after. There are five of us and we all were separated at different ages.” [Richard] That living situation was challenging, so he left school before finishing. Richard never possessed identity documents and as a teenager he was given a fraudulent identity document. He used this as his own for several years as it was a way to establish himself 45 See: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/refugees/help-within-canada/health-care/interim- federal-health-program/eligibility.html 46 See Annex I of this report, page 38, for further information on this process. 47 Figures provided by IRCC. 48 https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application/check-processing-times.html. 11