Matthew Tran<\/strong>, who combines those skills, played an instrumental role in bringing the project to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cFor this project specifically, my legal background helped with discussions between myself and Sean about what data was appropriate to include to provide a clear picture of what we were trying to convey through the data visualization,\u201d said Tran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor the Refugee Law Lab at large,\u201d he added, \u201cmy legal and process knowledge of refugee law from my experiences working in different legal clinics and community organizations has also been helpful during lab discussions relating to projects\/resources that are being created for legal practitioners to use.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The federal government imposed a visa requirement on visitors from Mexico in 2009 after it became Canada\u2019s top source of refugee claims. Those claims totalled 9,000 that year. The visa requirement prompted a sudden drop in claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tran used the Python programming language, commonly used in data science, to access APIs (application programming interfaces) that automatically downloaded refugee data from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. He then used Python packages to produce moving graphs. The RLL is now making the code available for the use of other researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think what\u2019s interesting is trying to understand patterns and outcomes in the legal process using data and code rather than standard doctrinal legal methods,\u201d said Rehaag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve put out data before, but not visual representations,\u201d he added. \u201cOur hope is this would be the first of several attempts to make it more accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the 20-year period, he noted, refugee flows to Canada have been influenced by global conflicts and crises, but also domestic political trends and changes in immigration policy and processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The animated bar graph (below) depicting changes in the top 15 asylum source countries in Canada shows that Mexico overtook Pakistan as the leading source of asylum seekers as early as 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n