Canada is refusing more study permits. Is new AI technology to blame? – Toronto Star
Soheil Moghadam applied twice for a study permit for a postgraduate program in Canada, only to be refused with an explanation that read like a templated answer.
The immigration officer was “not satisfied that you will leave Canada …….
Soheil Moghadam applied twice for a study permit for a postgraduate program in Canada, only to be refused with an explanation that read like a templated answer.
The immigration officer was “not satisfied that you will leave Canada at the end of your stay,” he was told.
After a third failed attempt, Moghadam, who already has a master’s degree in electronics engineering from Iran, challenged the refusal in court and the case was settled. He’s now studying energy management at the New York Institute of Technology in Vancouver.
His Canadian lawyer, Zeynab Ziaie, said that in the past couple of years, she has noticed a growing number of study permit refusals like Moghadam’s. The internal notes made by officers reveal only generic analyses based on cookie-cutter language and often have nothing to do with the particular evidence presented by the applicant.
“We’re seeing a lot of people that previously would have been accepted or have really what we consider as complete files with lots of evidence of financial support, lots of ties to their home country. These kinds of files are just being refused,” said Ziaie, who added that she has seen more than 100 of these refusals in her practice in the past two years.
“We’re challenging these cases in court and started to see a lot of the internal notes, notes that the officers have, and they all start to look even more alike than before.”
Now, she believes she knows why.
Over the summer, Ziaie and other immigration lawyers for the first time learned about a new software system that has been in use by Canadian immigration officials since March 2018 to process visitor visas, work permits and study permits.
It’s a Microsoft Excel-based system called Chinook.
Its existence came to light during a court case involving Abigail Ocran, a woman from Ghana who was refused a study permit by the Immigration Department.
Government lawyers in that case filed an affidavit by Andie Daponte, director of international-network optimization and modernization, who detailed the working and application of Chinook.
That affidavit has created a buzz among those practising immigration law, who see the new system — the department’s transition to artificial intelligence — as a potential threat to quality decision making, and its arrival as the harbinger of more troubling AI technology that could transform how immigration decisions are made in this country.
<…….
