Why is the refusal rate of Canada’s older student visas rising? The visa materials are obviously sufficient and reliable, but the visa is still rejected? The refusal letter always writes a standard reply that is irrelevant? Faced with these problems, have you ever considered that the immigration officer does not actually look at your visa application seriously, but an AI robot is reviewing your application.
It is a semi-open secret that the Immigration Bureau uses AI for visa review. Any consultant who has personally worked on cases for several years knows that the Immigration Bureau has long been using computer programs to assist in the trial of a large number of cases. In 2015, the number of study permit holders in Canada was 350,000, and this number doubled to nearly 700,000 in 2019. The number of immigration officers cannot be doubled in 4 years. In order to cope with the increasing number of applications, the Immigration Bureau has gradually relied on the AI system to assist in the batch processing of visas. In a recent court proceeding, USCIS disclosed the AI-assisted tool, Chinook (the name of a type of salmon). Since 2018, immigration officials have used it on a large scale to process applications for temporary resident visas such as study permits and work permits.
Chinook can extract key words and information from immigration applicant files, visually display a large amount of visa content in the form of a table, and automatically mark some “high-risk” applicants to identify high-risk elements in the materials, so that immigration officers can quickly Review applications in bulk. The system can also automatically select a standardized visa refusal letter, which is why your visa refusal letter is often a very face-like standard reply.
AI review is particularly unfriendly to older applicants who tend to immigrate; unlike applicants of the right age in their teens and twenties, older applicants for studying abroad often have multiple “high-risk” labels at the same time, such as older age, education background Read backwards, apply for degrees and have different work backgrounds, tend to immigrate, etc. The immigration officer may not even carefully review the explanation of the materials submitted by the applicant, and directly refuse the visa. My notes on November 3 pointed out that the current Canadian student visa approval rate is the worst time in the history.
Facing the general trend of AI trial, what can we applicants do? First of all, the error tolerance rate in the preparation of application materials is getting lower and lower, and it is necessary to be careful without any omission. Secondly, the problem of “labeling” on applicants will become more and more serious. Guests with negative labels must be prepared to avoid labels from the beginning of immigration planning. It is like beautifying your visa image in order to greatly beautify your resume through resume screening. Today at the end of 2021, I really do not recommend applicants who are not of the right age to apply for DIY study permits. It is very important to deal with a job that is not in the field of professional knowledge, objectively speaking, in order to save money and save money. It’s not really wise. Instead of fixing the situation after a visa refusal, it is better to find a licensed immigration consultant directly and spend a small amount of money to buy insurance.