Thank you very much, Madam Chair and honourable members of this committee, for this invitation.
I am a law professor at the University of Calgary in the Faculty of Law. I'm also the president of African Scholars Initiative, ASI-Canada, a registered not-for-profit organization that seeks to attract bright future scholars of African descent to pursue graduate education in Canada.
Speaking as a law professor, intellectual debate in my classroom is exceedingly informed when there is a diversity of opinions among my students. However, achieving such diversity becomes problematic when you have an immigration system that almost always approves study permit applications for students from countries located predominantly in Europe and which at the same time almost always refuses study permit applications for students from countries located predominantly in Africa.
As president of ASI-Canada, I can say that the greatest challenge we have faced in attracting bright future scholars of African descent to pursue higher education in Canada has always been dealing with Canadian immigration officers, especially at the visa office in Nairobi, Kenya. Study permit applications are routinely denied by visa officers relying on subsection 216(1) of the IRPR, a provision similar to paragraph 179(b) of the IRPR. The study permit applications are routinely refused because the visa officers are not satisfied that the applicants will leave Canada at the end of their studies.
This has resulted in the denial of over 80% of study permit applications in the visa offices in Africa. The Nairobi visa office is especially infamous for this. In fact, among my immigration lawyer colleagues in Canada, there is a common joke that when you prepare a study permit application for the Nairobi visa office, you prepare the application in anticipation of litigation. This is because the application will most likely be refused, resulting in judicial review before Federal Court of Canada, with the minister's counsel making an offer to settle and have the application sent back to the visa office for determination. Then the application is refused again. Then you come to the Federal Court to relitigate. Prospective international students often spend a greater percentage of the money meant to fund their education to pay the litigation fees arising from refusal decisions by visa officers.
Madam Chair and honourable members, I wish to also make a submission relating to family reunification in the context of Canadian children in Canada who are the children of foreign nationals outside Canada. For Canadian children whose parents are in countries that require visas to enter Canada, family reunification can be nightmarish.
I would like to narrate the sad experience of a five-year-old Canadian child. For privacy reasons, I will refer to her as “Baby G”. Baby G is a Canadian citizen who returned to Canada in 2018 with her mom, an international student. Baby G was very close to her father. This separation resulted in an adverse psychological impact on Baby G. The mom invited the biological father to visit Baby G in Canada in the hope that his temporary presence in Canada would help address the psychological problem.
The visa application was filed in the Nairobi visa office in September 2019 and was refused after 130 days. The visa officer was not satisfied that the dad would leave Canada because of his personal assets and financial status, even though the dad had submitted bank statements with a total balance of the equivalent of about $66,000 Canadian. In reaching this decision, the visa officer gave zero consideration to the best interests of the Canadian child being adversely affected by the decision.
Immediately, litigation was commenced at the Federal Court challenging the decision. The minister made an offer to settle on the condition that the litigation be discontinued and that the application be sent back to Nairobi for redetermination. The applicant trusted the minister and the Crown, and discontinued the litigation in April 2020. To date the minister has failed to fulfill his undertaking to review this application or to redetermine the application.