Immigration professionals and people requesting to enter Canada say that they are increasingly receiving rejection letters that believe they make no sense, which leads to ask if their cases are being reviewed full and properly by a human being.
Toronto’s immigration lawyer, Mario Bellissimo, began to have concerns after seeing multiple examples, as a case in which he worked in which the officer rejected a request claiming that no birth certificate was included, although he says that a copy of the birth certificate was attached to the request.
“I worry as an applicant and as a lawyer for an applicant: What is really looking at?” Bellissimo told CBC News.
Immigration professionals as Bellissimo point to immigration, refugees and citizenship, the use of Canada’s computer science decision -making technology as the problem.
Although IRCC acknowledges that you have developed computer programs that allow officers to classify and process applications faster, it rejects the idea that these programs affect the thoroughness of officers’ reviews.
IRCC says that human officers make the final decision on eligibility and admissibility for immigration cases. He says that rejected applicants obtain “exhaustive correspondence” from the department.
“The decisions about whether an applicant meets these requirements are taken by highly trained officials who evaluate each request against the relevant program criteria,” IRCC said in an email statement to CBC News.
But multiple immigration professionals told CBC News to worry that some IRCC officials reject the requests without verifying all the documents sent.
“[Refusals] You should never violate or violate procedural equity. And to do that, the officer looks at each document in the file, “said Annie Beaudoin, a senior Immigration officer withdrawal from IRCC, who is now an immigration consultant.
“And lately, there is evidence that this is not done.”
Why IRCC resorted to technology in decision -making
Immigration, refugees and citizenship of Canada have faced immense public pressure to deal with arrears and long processing times, which can take years in some cases.
The numbers published by IRCC at the end of July indicated that there were more than 2.2 million applications in IRCC systems. Of these, more than 901,000 had exceeded the time standards of the department for processing and were considered registered.
The Canadian immigration officer retired, Annie Beaudoin, analyzes a principle used in the decision -making of the department on visa applications.
Beaudoin, who worked for 15 years at the Office of the Los Angeles Immigration Department, says that when he started in 2004, there was “much less pressure.”
She says that when she retired in 2018, managers regularly remembered the officers quotas for the number of cases to process at a given time. He felt there was a lot of pressure to go fast, and less emphasis on the quality of work.
The department began using a computer model in 2018 called “Advanced Data Analysis” to classify cases and help officers to make eligibility decisions. It states that the system can accelerate processing up to 87 percent.
In an email, IRCC said that Advanced Analytics uses “automatic learning technology” to find patterns in the data, such as the probability that it is a specific type of applicant that has been approved by an officer in the past.
He says that Advanced Analytics does not recommend rejections; Only human officers can do this, “based on their own review.”
For the passage of human review, IRCC developed a tool based on the spreadsheet called Chinook to allow officers to examine and approve or reject multiple cases at the same time. It offers officers a boiler language to explain their decision.
IRCC describes Chinook as a tool to “simplify” the information shown for the officer. The agency emphasizes the tool itself does not use any artificial intelligence and does not make or recommend decisions.
But the Bellissimo immigration lawyer, who has submitted presentations to parliamentarians on the use of new IRCC technologies, cares about bringing officers to lose or spare parts of the applications.
He says that he has seen some decisions with time stamps that suggest that the officer only considered the case for a couple of minutes, which in Bellissimo’s opinion should not be seen as a “badge of honor.”
“It does not instill the confidence we need in an immigration system to promote the belief that we are processing applicants in a fair and transparent manner for the benefit of Canadians,” he said.
A 2018 Chinook user manual published under access to information suggests that an officer can use the system to examine up to 1,000 cases at the same time.
Vancouver’s immigration lawyer, Will Tao, who wrote a master’s thesis on the use of IRCC technology, worries that officers can use Chinook to take “bulk” actions, giving the same response to multiple cases. The characteristic can be used for both rejections and approval.
INTERNAL DOCUMENTS OF IRCC State officials can use Chinoak to make decisions in up to 150 applications, which according to IRCC can be added to their information management system at the same time.
In an informative note of 2023, IRCC described bulk processing as important to handle a growing number of cases efficiently.
“This bulk and general treatment of people has definitely had a negative impact on the system,” Tao told CBC News.
Tao recognizes IRCC’s opinion that the tools do not affect the decisions of the officers, but believes that the “line between the two is quite thin.”
“What it does is make decisions,” he said.
Processing speed
Chinook was first implemented in some IRCC offices in 2018. An IRCC document published under information to information in 2022 praised efficiency in processing cases that Ankara’s offices to London could win through the use of Chinook.
He even pointed out that computer problems in some offices meant that “strong processing officers were lowered to 60/day compared to their usual 75+/day.”
Beaudoin says he saw but never used an early version of Chinoak before retiring from the Los Angeles office.
In the last year, in her work as an immigration consultant, she says that some of her clients have received rejections, she feels that it challenges logic. She cites the example of a work permit negative on the argument that only one document related to employment was presented, when multiple documents were included.
“Like a [former] Immigration officer, I have a lot of sympathy and compassion, because officers have a lot of pressure to make many extremely fast decisions, “he said.” And that was when these problems occur. ”
In his statement to CBC, IRCC says that it enables officers to “evaluate” all applications “” systematically and systematically and make decisions “based on the information presented to them.” He adds that it depends on the applicant to satisfy the Visa officer to meet the requirements for a visa.
Beaudoin says that the department is willing to recognize and reconsider errors, but she says that a refusal based on an incomplete review of a file is unfair.
Other immigration professionals are equally worried.
In an open letter to IRCC on August 13, the Canadian Association of Immigration Lawyers wrote: “The introduction of automated and analytical tools to help decision makers is directly linked to the increase in decisions that are not significant as well as reasoned.”
Family reunification
When applicants do not agree with the reasons for an officer to reject, they can ask IRCC to reconsider. That was the case of Chandni Ajwani and Jay Dave, whose request to meet in Canada was initially rejected.
Ajwani is a Canadian citizen and lives in Montreal, while Dave is an Indian citizen who lives in Ahmedabad, India. The couple married in July 2023.
They have an current conjugal sponsorship application, which is expected to take some time to complete. Meanwhile, Dave requested a visitor visa to see Ajwani in Canada.
“When you stay at a distance, that is something that pinches you a lot,” Dave said.
In December 2024, an officer rejected the visa visa request, saying that Dave had insufficient funds and that the visit was not consistent with a temporary stay.
The couple, who works in finance and human resources, did not agree with that reasoning and told CBC that they presented many documents to prove their income.
The notes on the reasoning of the officer for the refusal did not mention a Canadian spouse or that Ajwani has an active sponsorship request for Dave.
His immigration consultant, Beaudoin, hoped to see at least some recognition of that relationship, and believes that an officer pays enough attention to the file.
This led Beaudoin and the couple to ask for a reconsideration. Dave’s visitor visa was finally awarded in March 2025.
Ajwani says he was upset and felt that the application was not fairly examined the first time.
“There was anger, I’m not going to lie. And the sad part is that I know that is not how Canada works. Our immigration system is quite fair,” he said.
IRCC plans to maintain the use of computerized tools to help their officers, saying in a statement that has evaluated the impacts and considers that the technology “essential to modernize our immigration system.”
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