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“Maybe because it violates the various UN agreements to which Canada is signatory, or because it violates the Charter rights,” he charges. “Whatever the reason, it will be nice to see the morally repugnant scheme struck down.”

One leading Canadian immigration lawyer, however, says the law serves an important purpose.

“The act wisely provides a mechanism to ensure aspiring immigrants don’t unduly burden the system, because that wouldn’t be fair,” said Sergio Karas, a Toronto-based lawyer. “The system is already over-taxed. All you need to do is walk into any emergency room and you see what the problem is. There are people in the corridors for hours on end.”

Of the one million or so permanent-resident applications filed every year, 0.2% — or about 2,000 — are rejected as medically inadmissible, Bill Brown, a Citizenship and Immigration Canada spokesman, said.

While those cases include people judged a threat to public health or safety, most stem from the excessive-cost question, said Mario Bellissimo, a Toronto immigration lawyer.

In the latest case, Asmeeta Burra, a physician in South Africa, and her architect husband had applied to be permanent residents under the skilled-worker category, planning to settle in British Columbia.

The fact her son is autistic triggered a medical assessment, which concluded that the cost of special education for the boy would total about $16,000 a year. That well exceeds the annually adjusted average social and medical cost for Canadians, currently about $6,300.