Evidence of meeting #24 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was person.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to both witnesses for being here.
I'll be sharing my time with Madame Groguhé.
I just want to reassure the witnesses that, as the chair pointed out, visas are part of this study. Although we're studying the general security of the system, visas are part of it.
I want to focus a bit on something that Mr. Randev pointed out and that I know Mr. Greenholtz has experience with.
You mentioned that the rejection rate in Chandigarh is 53% of everybody who applies for a visitor visa. Now, we're often told that the reason for that is security—i.e., there's a lot of fraud around Chandigarh, there are forged documents, there may be security concerns, or there's a fear that the people who come to Canada won't return.
We know that we don't have exit controls in Canada, so we really have no idea, when people come to Canada, whether they stay or leave. I just want to know what your comment and experience is in that regard.
I'll lead with my experience, which is that I have a lot of people who come into my office—I think a lot of MPs do—and particularly Indian families; they're not security risks, and there's no fraud or forgery or any of those things involved at all. Their relatives are simply denied visas. It leads me to believe that maybe a lot of people are being rejected for visas under the grounds of security, but those grounds are not necessarily real.
Mr. Greenholtz, I know that you were an immigration officer in an overseas embassy. I think you did process visitor visas.
I'd be interested to hear comments from both of you. Are people being turned down for visas in large numbers for reasons other than security grounds, in your experience? And if so, do you have any suggestions to the committee?
Immigration Consultant, As an Individual
Yes, Mr. Davies.
I don't think security is the primary reason they are rejecting all the visas. In my view, there is a generic view among all the visa officers in that region. They have some general opinion regarding all the applicants who are applying, that there might be forged documents along with applications, and so on. In my opinion, this is not the case. There are families. There are well-to-do families. There are rich families. They have properties in Punjab, and they have good ties with their home country.
Even then they have the same generic form, the same template they take over and over again: “I'm not satisfied that you will come back after staying in Canada.” I don't really understand how a visa officer can judge a person without proper analysis of that case and a proper interview with that person. The majority of the cases are being rejected even without interviews.
I doubt the visa officers' decisions, because, particularly in that region, there's a general view in the mind of visa officers that they have to reject an application without going through it properly.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you, Mr. Randev.
I just want to say, Mr. Greenholtz, before we turn to you, you mentioned that someone was taking maybe five minutes to determine. Martin Collacott appeared before this committee on Tuesday, and he felt it would be advisable to have a face-to-face interview between the immigration officer and a visa applicant. Is that something you think would help?
As an Individual
I think it would absolutely help. The point I was trying to make was that the system we have in place now is unfair and not really worth pursuing, because it answers neither security questions nor any actual questions about the applicant. A procedurally fair and useful system would require a much closer examination of the application. And if there were concerns, under the conditions of procedural fairness, that system should include an interview in order to give the applicant a chance to refute or to satisfy whatever concerns the officer had. That is an incredibly expensive and cumbersome system, so what we have is a compromise that really doesn't satisfy any of our requirements.
Sadia Groguhé NDP Saint-Lambert, QC
Thank you for your comments.
My question is for Mr. Greenholtz. In your document, you refer to a systemic problem, which would mean that these rejections are recurring. You also mention procedural fairness.
Could you tell us more about that concept, but taking into account the security aspect, please?
As an Individual
I can link procedural fairness with security and the question that Don asked just a minute ago. Procedural fairness requires that the criteria that an applicant must meet be made explicit and clear, and that the applicant have a chance to answer or refute any concerns the visa officer has. That could be done through documents, but it's more thorough with an interview.
The process we have now violates procedural fairness, and at the same time it doesn't accomplish our security or other screening goals, because the applications get only a cursory look-through. To satisfy both procedural fairness and our security and other concerns, Mr. Collacott's suggestion that everyone be interviewed is an excellent one. Unfortunately, the resource implications are huge, so some decision needs to be made on that point.
NDP
Sadia Groguhé NDP Saint-Lambert, QC
Does your concept of national profiling refer to the fact that some parts of the world are more subject to rejections than others? Does it also embrace that aspect?
As an Individual
I don't have the statistics, so I shouldn't be rash, but I would imagine that it does in this instance.
As Mr. Randev said, there are very few Federal Court challenges of visitor visa refusals, because they're seen as low stakes. I was able to find one case. That's at the end of my submission. The judge basically said that reasonable decision-making must take place.
The case I've cited in here involves a woman who was 60 years old, spoke no English, had never travelled overseas, had just retired, had been married for 30 years, had three adult children and four grandchildren—this is rural China we're talking about—had a pension, had joint property, and had siblings within walking distance of her home. This person was rejected because she had “insufficient ties” to her home country.
I would ask any reasonable person to judge whether that set of circumstances represents sufficient ties to one's home country. That's where national profiling comes in.
As an Individual
There can be no other explanation for these kinds of rejections.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
First and foremost, I do appreciate the two of you and the presentations you made. You reaffirm many of my thoughts and beliefs.
As I'm sitting here and listening, having had the opportunity to read a little bit more of your presentation, Mr. Greenholtz, what came to my mind is how wonderful it would be to have individuals from Chandigarh and some of these other embassies actually listening to what is being said. I don't think you're alone. You'll find that many members of Parliament get that same sense of frustration as to why it is that we're getting so many temporary visas being denied for individuals who should be approved, quite frankly. They want to come here for funerals and for weddings. There are all sorts of wonderful, great reasons why they should be allowed to visit Canada. It's sad that we have these numbers of individuals who get turned down.
Having said that, I do want to pick up on this whole idea of procedural fairness. Is there a better way to allow for individuals who are having to apply for visitor visas, a way that would make it not only efficient but fairer? There's a suggestion by some, for example, that we should allow for the application to be received via the Internet. If it's rejected, the individual then would be afforded the opportunity to visit an embassy to make a presentation. Do you have any thoughts on that particular idea or on anything else that could allow for this sense of fairness that doesn't seem to be there today?
Maybe Mr. Greenholtz, and then Mr. Randev, if you don't mind, could comment.
Immigration Consultant, As an Individual
First of all, I'd like to mention a few things here. I don't know what kind of security concerns there are if Ms. Kaur has cancer and wants to see her mom at the last moment. I don't see a visa officer looking at any security concerns. In the second case, when Mr. Cui's mom was murdered in Toronto...I think this is just their pre-set mindset. Visa officers just want to put on a stamp for the refusal. I don't see any security concern there. He's looking into those particular humanitarian grounds cases.
On the other side, if an applicant applies to visit Canada to visit his family or for tourism, as I told you, we can put in some options here. It should be optional. There should be another option whereby the visa officer can ask for a bond. If the visa officer is not satisfied, he can say, okay, I want a $15,000 or $20,000 bond, and when you come back, here's your money.... If the applicant doesn't comply with the conditions, the bond will be forfeited. My concern is—
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
I'm going to stop you there, because I only get five minutes,
Mr. Greenholtz, if you don't mind, could you provide a comment on it, if that's okay?
As an Individual
I think what we're looking at is a question of this being efficient versus effective. The efficient system we have now is a fairly low-cost system, and it's efficient because there's no appeal. A visa officer can quickly check off the boxes for insufficient ties to home country, for concerns about finances, and for having never travelled abroad, and quickly issue the refusal, erring on the side of caution, as it were: it's better to keep out even one potential visa overstayer than grant visas to 99 legitimate applicants, to turn the traditional logic on its head.
In order to have an effective system, you have to put more resources into it. There are a lot of different ways that it could be configured. There could be the option for an interview in the case of every refusal. There could be a beefing up of the back end in terms of exit controls and CBSA's resources to deal with visa overstayers and other concerns. Those kinds of details require a more thorough policy analysis.
But I think we have opted for efficiency. We have a very efficient system. It's fair to no one. It frustrates very many people. But it's not an effective system.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Randev, for being here with us, and also Professor Greenholtz.
I guess we have three things in common: strong ties to British Columbia—I'm the MP for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country—a career partly in Asia, and we're both good friends of Don Davies.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
I wanted to address my questions on this pre-screening, as I'm not following your logic. I'm sure it's me and perhaps no one else in the room.
Better pre-screening has been recommended by another witness. On the one hand, I think you're saying that better pre-screening could be fairer; I think you said that, but I'll get you to respond in just a second.
I know that in the case of Mexico, pre-screening has been an essential step forward in eliminating a bogus refugee problem. We had some 10,000 unsubstantiated refugee claimants come from Mexico over a three-year period, leading up to July 2009. A visa requirement was put in that inherently meant there was now pre-screening, and therefore we eliminated that problem. We have saved, I believe, something like $140 million in processing unsubstantiated refugee claims. Meanwhile, while it's not ideal to have a visa requirement, the visas are being processed with increasing efficiency.
To Mr. Greenholtz, perhaps you would explain your view on better pre-screening. Would that enable our government to identify everyone on a ship or a plane destined for Canada before they reached Canadian soil, something that clearly was the motive behind the new rule vis-à-vis Mexico in July 2009?
As an Individual
As I've understood you, you've conflated a couple of things. Imposing a visa is a form of pre-screening. It works much in the way that visa applications in India and China work. The applications are given a cursory look-over, and the majority of them are refused.
Putting a visitor visa requirement on Mexico was a very effective way of staunching the refugee claimant flow, because those people just didn't get visas to come to Canada to make the claim. It's not because the legitimacy of their claim was in any way evaluated; it's just because the nature of imposing a visitor visa on a country means that very many fewer people will be showing up at the border.
So in terms of—
