Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable members of this committee, for the privilege to appear before you once again to discuss a very important issue relating to the growing difficulty faced by foreign students from Africa to secure study visas for post-secondary education in Cana

Citizenship and Immigration committee  On November 10, 2020, I appeared before a sitting of this committee. I raised some concerns with regard to high study visa refusal rates for applicants from Africa, especially at the Canadian visa office in Nairobi, Kenya. Madam Chair, I'm privileged to appear before this commit

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I just want to state that I am not the one making the allegation. This is a fact. There was evidence from a report that was funded by IRCC itself, which is the IRCC Anti-Racism Employee Focus Groups report. That report established the fact that there is racism in IRCC and it cite

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. The issue of financial requirements and documentation, if I may also refer to the IRCC report, was actually one of the issues raised in terms of discriminatory treatment of applicants. In the case of SDS countries, all you need to show is that you have a guaranteed investm

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are many problems [Technical difficulty—Editor] for the low approval rates. Some of the problems may be attributed to resources. For example, for most of these countries that have low approval rates, the study permit applications are not processed in those countries. They a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. I agree 100% on the creation of an independent ombudsman to oversee activities of IRCC.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have no idea. I did an access to information request through IRCC, trying to get information with regard to the Nigerian student express program. I got the documentary disclosure from IRCC. I went through every page of those documents to find the justification. I found none.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. I will do that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Let me quickly state that in addition to being the president of African Scholars Initiative based in Canada, I am also an assistant professor in the faculty of law at the University of Calgary, and my field of specialization is artificial intelligence and law. This is one area in

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Based on my dealings with IRCC so far, and general information pertaining to IRCC, I would be in support of any third party oversight of activities by IRCC. This is where we have a problem, because there has not been that third party oversight. That is why this problem keeps gett

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We've taken many steps. In November of last year, a group of Canadian professors of Nigerian descent wrote a letter to the minister. That letter is part of the exhibit that I submitted to this committee. That was shortly after the IRCC report was released. We drew the attention o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We are not making allegations. We are stating the facts on this report, as well as files from other access to information reports. We have the Nigerian student express and the requirement that the applicants have to write the English-language examination, even though the primary

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My ability to answer this question will be very limited, because I have zero idea about the artificial intelligence technology IRCC is using. I may not be able to provide a specific answer to the question, but in every case where the use of artificial intelligence technology is i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm concerned already about the discrimination, the bias and discrimination, against African students when it comes to study visa applications. My major concern is having those biases fed into technology. That is very serious, because as humans we tend to have this concern that o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I am very familiar with dual intent. I'm a lawyer, and part of my practice, of course, includes immigration law. “Dual intent” means that if somebody is coming to Canada to study and they also have the intent to become a permanent resident after that, it is perfect and fine unde