Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I would first like to start by thanking the committee for this invitation. We hope it will be the start of a long history of working together.
The Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l'immigration, or AQAADI, is a group of close to 400 lawyers who practise in all areas of immigration law, including refugee protection, and economic, family and humanitarian immigration.
Since 1991, so for almost 30 years, AQAADI has been taking a stand and intervening before various parliamentary commissions, but also before the Superior Court of Quebec, the federal courts and the Supreme Court of Canada. AQAADI is at the heart of all immigration discussions, and the various media constantly solicit its opinion.
As president of the association and on behalf of our vice-president of the humanitarian and refugee component, who is with me today, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today.
First, I will talk about the problems with visas, mainly study permits, for people from French-speaking Africa.
I wish to raise before the committee the serious discrepancies in approval rates for temporary visa applications, such as study permits, work permits, or visitor visas, which affect people from French-speaking Africa, particularly those from the Maghreb.
This is what our access-to-information requests have allowed us to confirm for 2019. First of all, 77% of applications for study permits from Algeria were refused, while 93% of those submitted by citizens of France were accepted. The refusal rate was 36% for India and 15% for China. In contrast, the refusal rate was 44% for Morocco, 75% for Senegal, 86% for Chad, and so on.
As you know, many of these students are considering coming to Quebec and must first obtain a certificate of acceptance from that province. The Quebec immigration authorities, namely the Quebec department of immigration, francization and integration, have chosen to accept these future students in the province. In 100% of the cases, these students were chosen by Quebec. However, subsequently, a very large proportion of these applications for study permits are rejected by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada or by embassies abroad.
In March 2020, it was reported that only 10% of those who obtain a study permit go to Quebec, even though Quebec represents about 25% of the Canadian population. We are losing out and this situation must be remedied as quickly as possible so that Quebec receives its fair share of student immigration.
I will now turn things over to Ms. Valois.