Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 4th, 2013

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

How do we compare competitively with other countries? Do other countries charge additional fees on top of the standard fee? I heard that Australia has some very different kinds of fees, for example. Do other countries like the U.S. charge the same amount, or does the price of their visa vary depending on the type of visa they issue? Can you elaborate on that?

[Robert Orr]

The fee for a regular visitor visa in the United States is $164. In the U.K., it's $126. Australia charges $120, and New Zealand, $143. We're certainly in the ballpark, and probably a little bit under what others are charging.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

Good morning. Thank you for making the time to come and talk to us today.

I'm really delighted that, as a committee, we're spending some time talking about temporary resident visas, because I do have a lot of concerns but mostly, I would say, a lot of frustration. That's not only from me but from what I hear from other MPs as well.

Of every riding in Canada, mine has the largest Sikh population. I know everybody has the most diverse riding, but mine has the largest Sikh population. As is traditional in many southern and eastern cultures, the weddings in my community are often very large. Actually, if you have a wedding with fewer than 500, it's considered a failure. To have a guest list of over 1,000 is very common. At these weddings, the presence of whole branches of extended family from the other side of the world is quite common and this is an expense that even the hosting family is willing to incur.

Just as an example, I went to a destination wedding for my nephew in Scotland and my brother picked up the whole cost, not only for me but for my husband, my two children, and my three grandchildren. They expected that, because it was so important for them to have us there. I understand the importance of having family and close friends who, as you know, often tend to be closer than some of our family members.

Tourism—because this is what it falls under—generates business for Canadians. Even if the families that arrive do not have a lot of money, the family hosting them buys more food, takes them out to visit the local sights to be seen, and travels with them from Vancouver to Calgary to Edmonton, even to Toronto and sometimes even to Ottawa. In other words, the family is more inclined to do the touristy thing and therefore help our economy as well. I'm sure you guys all know this, because tourism is good for us. It's what we try to encourage.

I keep looking at this—tourism—as a lucrative benefit to our country. For the rejection rate that we're seeing, there must be some very real concerns about the risks involved. I'm looking for some kind of insight as to what those risks might be, and I do appreciate having these criteria here. What I'm witnessing, weekly, in my office...and I would say our casework around tourist visas has gone up by about 25% to 30% from the first six months to now. I've had my staff tracking it. What we're seeing is brides-to-be, grooms-to-be, parents, and grandparents devastated as they think that their wedding is going to have to go ahead without their family members. That causes them considerable concern.

At the same time, I want to say that I was absolutely impressed with the professionalism of the consular workers in immigration when I visited New Delhi. I met with all of the directors and I met with the director in Chandigarh as well. I was told at that time that their target was actually 80 a day. That was their goal. It makes my mind boggle.

One of the most common check marks we see on the list when somebody gets rejected is for “no travel history”, and the second one is for “will not return”. You often find those things are checked off, and when you actually look at the application, all that evidence is there. Are we looking at any other mechanisms to ensure that a foreign national does not overstay a visit other than not issuing the visa to begin with? How are we going to use our biometrics, for example?

[Robert Orr]

Let me begin and perhaps my colleague can add to my comments.

There are a few things. First of all, I appreciate your comments about the professionalism of our visa officers overseas. I want to underline that.

Second, in terms of the number of applications that individuals are to deal with, yes, it does vary, as I tried to suggest. It may be 80 straightforward applications in Delhi, or some others may be dealing with more complicated applications and thus have lower targets.

The other thing I think we have to recognize is that 82% of the people who applied for a visitor visa last year got it. So it's a very high acceptance rate overall. That's the worldwide result, 82%. It's done on a case-by-case basis. So it still does leave, though, probably about 200,000 people who are rejected. That is true.

When you're looking at an application, you're looking at what I might call a composite picture of risk, trying to evaluate a variety of different factors to determine that individual's intent. It's a very difficult decision to make and one that we take very seriously. So we would be looking at a variety of different factors and objective material provided to us such as bank account statements, employment, family configuration, and so on. There are a variety of reasons, reasons given to go to Canada and reasons to return. But then the visa officer must evaluate all those things together and come to a conclusion.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

There's also a remarkable difference in wait times from one part of the world to another. Can you elaborate on the difference between, let's say, three days for Ghana and Poland, versus almost five months for Turkey?

[Robert Orr]

Yes, there are certain anomalies, for sure. The situation in Turkey is primarily because of the closure of our office in Tehran. The office in Ankara was required to absorb that work from Tehran, which has skewed the delivery times for visitor visas in that office.

I recently visited Ankara and I'm pleased to say that the processing times are coming down dramatically for both our Iranian clientele and our Turkish clientele.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I would like to get a brief overview. Suppose you are a family member here in Canada and you're trying to get someone to visit Canada for a funeral, a birthday celebration, a wedding celebration, or a graduation, for example. These are all important as we would all in this room agree, yet there's a sense of great frustration in terms of when family members are in fact being rejected. I wanted to highlight what I believe has the potential to be a bit of a flaw. When you go through the criteria used to evaluate whether or not to issue a visa it includes—you made reference to this and I'll quote you—that they “have sufficient ties to their home country to indicate they will leave Canada when their visa expires”.

I often question to what degree that rationale is fair and is being fairly applied. I say that because there are individuals who get the sense.... If you are one of those immigration officers reviewing, is there any form of target numbers? For example, if you get an 80% approval rating in one office is there an obligation for an immigration officer to look at it, and if they started to approve 95% of the ones they're reviewing, then a red flag would come up?

It's almost as if there's some sort of a target number that has to be achieved. How does it happen that a person whose father is dying in the hospital and who wants to be able to visit his father, who has a wife he's leaving behind and children he's leaving behind, is still being rejected? There are numerous examples that one could give.

To what degree does the department look into those percentages and the rationale that's being provided? I, for one, think that the system needs to change to take into consideration the family unit and why we're seeing so many rejected. Ninety per cent of the time, yes, finances are one reason, but the biggest reason is that we don't believe the person is going to return to the country of origin. How can they convince anyone that in fact they're going to return to the country of origin, even when they have family members, and so forth?

So there's a great deal of frustration. I only have the five minutes. I realize I've probably gone three minutes into it, but I would appreciate some comment on that, and then, very briefly, I did not know that we extended the multiple-entry visa from five years to 10 years in 2011. That's relatively new. Can you provide some sort of statistic—not now but to the clerk's office—of how many people have actually capitalized on that? I think that's fairly new to the committee, even though it was a policy that was put in place in 2011.

Thank you.

[Robert Orr]

First of all, there are no targets for officers. It is entirely done on a case-by-case basis. The statistics we have and the percentages that I provide are purely a compilation of what that case-by-case exercise results in. You do see changes year by year in what those percentages might be within a visa office, and that is the result of a case-by-case study.

Second, the family consideration is at the core of what these officers are going to be looking at. In itself, it may not be sufficient to issue a visa, but it is certainly a very key consideration in any determination.

Third, I would say yes, Mr. Chair, we could provide those statistics about the multiple-entry visas. The one restriction in that is we do issue 10-year, multiple-entry visas, but it has to be within the limit of the passport. Many countries will only issue a passport for up to five years, and thus we could only issue the multiple-entry visa for a corresponding period.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have about 30 seconds. Is that possible?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes, it is actually.

When you talk about that target of, let's say, 80%, there are 13 officers, let's say, in one embassy. That's a general.... Is each one obligated to do the 85%?

[Robert Orr]

Absolutely not. It is a case-by-case description.

One of my officers may get a series of applications that are very straightforward and have an extremely high acceptance rate. Another officer may have very complicated cases that may result in a higher refusal rate.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Lamoureux.

Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to the committee on this particular study.

In your opening remarks you talked about the purpose of processing TRVs. Obviously, we want to facilitate legitimate travel, while weeding out those who falsely represent themselves, or with fraudulent documents, etc.

You had indicated there were 1.2 million visitor visas processed last year, and I heard you say that 200,000 applications were rejected. Were those 200,000 applications that were rejected related to fraud, specifically, or were there other terms of inadmissibility other than fraud?

[Robert Orr]

That would be the full range of refusals, and thus fraud would be part of that.

I don't have a specific breakdown, but I suspect it's a relatively smaller portion of the overall refusal rate.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

You touched base with some of the documents you actually would specifically look at in terms of dealing with fraud, or prospects of fraud.

Is there any type of red flag on an application or a red flag on a specific document that would lead you to investigate it more closely? Or do you actually screen all applications for the possibility of fraud? I'm trying to figure out what triggers you to go that one step further, or whether you go that one step further on every single application.

[Robert Orr]

No, it's not going to be on every single application, but it's a consideration with every application.

In certain environments, it's a fact that there tends to be more fraud than in other environments, and certain offices are going to be more conscious of that—certain types of applications as well. One of the things we are trying to do at the moment is to establish risk indicators to determine in a very clear and systematic way where we are at higher risk and where we have applications that are very straightforward.

I will give you an example of very straightforward applications. It's people who have visited Canada a number of times before, or perhaps people being involved in the international experience class, basically the student workers who come to Canada. They are very straightforward applications with a very low refusal rate. It's not an issue of fraud.

But there are certain areas where we know there are ghost consultants who are active in the area, or we know there are people involved in fraud in the area, and that is going to be an indicator that we would spend more time on that and be more cautious.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

We talk about those areas you are referring to, specific countries or regions of the world. Can you list a couple of the ones that have a higher incidence of fraud or a higher rate of unscrupulous people working in that industry?

[Robert Orr]

I'm a bit reluctant to single out any particular parts of the world, but there have been areas. I mentioned in my opening remarks, in the Punjab we've had some success recently, where we've been able to unearth some areas of fraud. We've had incidents in West Africa. We've had incidents in various parts of the world, so I'm a bit reluctant to zero in on any particular country.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

If a particular individual—and we are talking about a straightforward application where they've been here before, it's a student visa, or whatever the case may be—has attempted to come to Canada or claimed refugee status, how would this affect their temporary resident visa application? That must be a red flag, obviously, but what kind of extra screening would be done by that particular officer in that specific instance?

[Robert Orr]

As I said, any visa officer's going to be looking at a whole variety of factors when they look at an application. If someone has claimed refugee status in Canada before, obviously that's going to be an issue they would be looking at very closely to discern the circumstances of that. Is that going to result in an automatic refusal? No. They're going to be looking at that piece of information in the context of the broader picture of the applicant's application.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

If someone has physically been removed from Canada or deported, surely that's a very red flag. How would that particular instance or that particular application be handled?

[Robert Orr]

Within the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act there are specific methods to deal with people who have been deported. Yes, that obviously has a different character, and one has to deal with that according to the act.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

With respect to fraud, when we talk about a straightforward application compared to another application that has more screening or more thorough, in-depth investigation before putting a stamp of approval on it, how does this affect the processing times? Do you have a ballpark figure as to whether it's a couple of hours versus weeks? I'm just curious to know.

The bottom line question I'm going to ask you at the very end of all of this is: what is the cost of fraudulent applications, perhaps, to the Canadian taxpayer? How does this affect this whole area? Obviously, for processing applications that are all legitimate, straightforward, easy-peasy, there's a difference in cost from those associated with people who are trying to scam the system. Could you speak to that for a moment, please?