Repo for sharing, loading and analyzing Immigration and Refugee Board Refugee Protection Division (2002 to 2020) cases programmatically

Author: Sean Rehaag

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Dataset & Code to be cited as:

Sean Rehaag, "Refugee Protection Division (Legacy) Bulk Decisions Dataset" (2023), online: Refugee Law Laboratory https://refugeelab.ca/bulk-data/rpd/.

To load data, see load_and_analyze_rad_cases.ipynb

Notes:

(1) Data Source: In the fall of 2022 the Immigration and Refugee Board provided the RLL with a full backlog of approximately 116k published decisions from all divisions (RAD, RPD, ID, IAD). Because the IRB no longer regularly publishes RPD decisions, the dataset is no longer being updated, which is why we refer to the dataset as a legacy dataset. For more recent RPD decisions (obtained via Access to Information Requests), see the RLLR dataset.

(2) Unofficial Data: The data are unofficial reproductions. For official versions, please contact the Immigration and Refugee Board.

(3) Non-Affiliation / Endorsement: The data has been collected and reproduced without any affiliation or endorsement from the Immigration and Refugee Board.

(4) Non-Commerical Use: As indicated in the license, data may be used for non-commercial use (with attribution) only. For commercial use, please contact the Immigration and Refugee Board.

(5) Accuracy: Data was collected and processed programmatically for the purposes of academic research. While we make best efforts to ensure accuracy, data gathering of this kind inevitably involves errors. As such the data should be viewed as preliminary information aimed to prompt further research and discussion, rather than as definitive information.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Rafael Dolores who coded the initial parsing scripts for the Refugee Appeal Division Bulk Decisions Dataset, which were modified for this datset.