Sri Lankan migrants come ashore in Victoria in October. (CP)Fifty of 76 Tamil migrants who have been in custody since arriving in British Columbia in October are going to be released from custody over the next week, an immigration lawyer says.

Twenty-three release orders have now been issued — 15 had been issued by Wednesday — and lawyer Narindar Kang said more are coming as Immigration and Refugee officials work through the holidays.

The migrants, who arrived off the West Coast in October aboard a freighter, have all made refugee claims, saying they were fleeing civil war in Sri Lanka, their home country.

There are no grounds for continued incarceration, Kang said.

"If you wash up on the shores of this country there are only four grounds to keep you behind bars: your identity is unclear; you pose a flight risk; you are a danger to the public or there is a 'reasonable' suspicion you are a threat to national security," Kang told CBC News.

Those grounds don't apply to at least 50 of the Sri Lankan migrants, he said, and now it's simply a matter of the Immigration and Refugee Board and others to process their releases.

"The IRB itself is under tremendous pressure," Kang said. "It's the holiday season but they are diligently working to schedule these cases. But we are hoping that over the Christmas break we can do it. The hearings and appeals unit have stepped up to the plate and are working through the Christmas holiday.

"Many of these people have family members who have been accepted as convention refugees, who have suffered persecution in their home countries and are upstanding members of our social communities," Khang added.

"They are Canadian citizens and they are willing and able to take care of these individuals into their homes, away from the taxpayers' purse."

Those homes are mostly in Toronto and Montreal, officials say, and that is where they will head when released. The conditions for release are standard: posting a bond, reporting weekly to immigration officials and, in this case, not associating with anyone connected with the Tamil Tigers, which is considered a terrorist group by the Canadian government.