Risk Assessment, Triage Systems and The Challenge of Fair Immigration Decision-Making
Claire Harel
Algorithmic tools are increasingly used by governments with the stated aim of improving efficiency and consistency in public administration decisions. This paper focuses on the use of risk assessment and triage systems in immigration and asylum decision-making, systems which enable authorities to categorise, sort, or prioritise cases according to predefined criteria and to generate recommendations that inform final administrative decisions. These tools – whether AI-driven or rule-based – exert significant influence: even as human officials retain formal responsibility for the final decision, they shape the informational and evaluative basis on which that decision is made.
Yes the status quo of regulatory regimes is underdeveloped. In their current form, regulations are oriented primarily toward administrative efficiency rather than functioning as a check on state power over affected individuals. Consequently, fairness standards remain, in practice, inconsistently applied and subordinated to government interests.
This paper offers a critical analysis of fairness protection across four major case studies of algorithmic assistance in immigration governance: the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.
