David Cohen (lawyer)


David Cohen is a Canadian immigration lawyer, based in Montreal, Quebec. He is the senior partner at the Campbell Cohen law firm, and has given evidence on immigration to the Senate of Canada and Parliament of Canada. He is noted for his use of the internet to help immigrants move to, and settle in, Canada.

Education

Cohen graduated in 1972 from the McGill University Faculty of Law with a Bachelor of Civil Law degree.

Career

Cohen has been practicing Canadian immigration law since being called to the Bar of Quebec in 1975, and is a member of the Law Society of Ontario. He is a member in good standing of the Canadian Bar Association's Immigration Law Section, the American Immigration Lawyers' Association, and the Quebec Immigration Lawyers Association. In 2017, he was named a Life Governor of the Quebec Bar Foundation, which is a charitable organization that seeks to advance the rule of law through research. He was also a member of The Conference Board of Canada's National Immigration Centre, which is a network of private and public sector organizations such as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada that supports the dissemination of Canadian immigration research.
In May 2008, he testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and Standing Committee on Finance on the legal impacts of proposed changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Later that month, he presented similar evidence to the Senate of Canada. Cohen argued against the proposed reforms to IRPA due to concerns they would enable Canada to be discriminatory in its selection of immigrants.

Media

Cohen has received media recognition for his work assisting immigrants. In 2015, David Berger and Cohen spearheaded an effort in conjunction with other members of the Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom to reunite Syrian refugees with their family in Montreal. Members of the Temple raised $70,000 to sponsor two Syrian families through Canada's Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program. His efforts to help immigrants have largely entailed using technology to provide immigrants with information on how to move to Canada, as well as to connect immigrants with each other so they can develop social networks and find employment.
He has been invited to discuss a variety of different immigration issues with media outlets around the world. For instance, Cohen's analysis on how U.S. politics, such as the outcomes of presidential elections, influences immigration to Canada, has been cited by the likes of The Conference Board of Canada, the New York Times, CNN, the Telegraph, among others. Cohen and the CanadaVisa.com website achieved considerable attention following the 2016 United States presidential election. Traffic caused by interest in Canadian immigration caused the website to crash the night of the election.