Good morning, Madam Chair. I appreciate being here today.
My name is Arlene Ruiz and I am the founder and owner of Alexene Immigration & Employment Services based here in Saskatoon. I am a licensed and regulated immigration consultant and recruiter and work with a lot of foreign nationals who intend to come to Canada to study, to work, to become PR, and ultimately become Canadian citizens.
Being in this line of duty, I am often on the receiving end of the frustrations of clients when things don't go as anticipated. Although some of the reasons are understandable, there have been cases where the decisions of IRCC do not make sense and reasons for refusal are completely illogical.
Where I see some of the systemic discrimination, it's more with the IRCC's use of the system called Chinook. The overall refusal rate for 2020 was 53%, compared with 34% in 2018, with sharp increases in refusal rates for the largest countries with students coming to Canada.
As an example, the study permit refusal rate for India has increased from 34% in 2018, to a staggering 57% in 2020.
This is very concerning and, as an advocate for my clients, it is difficult to make people understand some of the basis for refusals because I, too, quite often do not understand how IRCC comes up with their decisions. We see this system mostly applying to India's and China's nationals. Although this system was put in place in 2018, IRCC was not very transparent about this. Quite often, you would only know that the Chinook algorithm was used if you requested an ATIP.
The issue I am having is with the lack of transparency from IRCC, which leads me to believe that this is a form of systemic discrimination. The IRCC needs to be held to a higher accountability by way of transparency.
Chinook was introduced in March of 2018 and refusal rates increased significantly. Study visa refusal rates jumped from 34% in 2018 to 40% in 2019. Furthermore, refusal rates have increased from 40% to 53% in 2020. Most of the refusals are just getting a template message, which may totally be unrelated to the person's case. Even though IRCC has emphasized that Chinook is not an AI system, I beg to disagree.
The other point that I would like to bring up today as part of my observation for the Pollara Strategic study is that it is clearly apparent as well that there is systemic discrimination with the way the IRCC is handling the issues with Ukraine versus the refugees from Afghanistan. I would like to believe that Canada is a country that promotes diversity and inclusion, however, I feel as though Ukrainians are being given favourable treatment in comparison to the Afghan nationals.
Is Canada helping Ukrainians in their desperate time of need because they happen to look like us or dress like us or pray like us, or do we reserve our help exclusively for them while denying the same help for others?
There seems to be a double standard in our country's international response, but if it was really about humanity, then they would treat all of those trying to escape violence equally.
I would also like to highlight issues that surround those who have applied under the caregiver pathway. The higher percentage of the applicants under this pathway are from the Philippines, but the processing time has been an extensive amount and because of the lengthy processing, the majority of the applicants' relationship stresses...are often causing breakdowns in their relationships, with marriages falling apart, children reaching the age of majority and all other cases. In some other cases, employers either have already passed away—and I have personally heard and witnessed some of this—or the person to be cared for has already reached the age where care is no longer needed, as in the case with child care providers.
While other application streams require higher urgency, my recommendation is for IRCC to allocate more resources to facilitate the speedy processing of applicants who are often left out. They feel they are being pushed to the back burner. They feel neglected and unimportant.
Thank you.