African students applying for Canadian study visas stand a better chance of getting the permits when they do so through legal representatives based in the country. Using Canadian immigration lawyers who also directly act for universities they plan to enrol in helps international students better navigate their immigration journey with trust and transparency at the core of the process.
This is contrary to using sub-agents based in African countries who act for aggregator recruitment firms acting for the institutions, a Canadian international students’ migration expert told University World News in reaction to reports of concerns over alarming study visa refusal rates for African students.
Support for international students during the visa application process could become more pressing following an announcement of a 35% cut in the number of student visas Canada will issue.
University World News reported that in an effort to deal with the politically explosive housing and affordability crises that experts say are exacerbated by the more than 800,000 international students in the country, Marc Miller, the minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, announced the cut, expected to result in a decrease of 364,000 international students coming to Canada this year and next.
University World News also reported earlier that, between 2018 and 30 April 2023, officials at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) rejected 59% of the visa applications from English-speaking Africans and 74% from French-speaking Africans seeking to study at Canada’s colleges and universities.
The lawyers are available in online platforms that are easy for students to engage with and offer high-quality legal guidance and application review, ensuring that students present their strongest and most comprehensive applications, Michael Pietrocarlo, head of marketing at BorderPass said.
Expert, affordable help
Immigration lawyers such as BorderPass, he claimed, make Canada more accessible to African students “by offering online study permit applications with Canadian legal review – all at a very low cost”. He said they provide better protection for students and ongoing guidance about Canadian immigration laws. The result is that more African students’ applications are successful.
Pietrocarlo denied claims of racial bias in the visa denials, saying it was hard to make a judgment as Canada remained largely supportive of diversity. “In our experience, applications made by African students through BorderPass have high rates of success – just as successful as those from other regions.”
Falsified and fraudulent applications in which the information required is either inaccurate or poorly filled out contribute to rejections, although this does not seem to be a problem with African applications.
“Agents face conflicts of interest, which can lead to misrepresentation aimed at boosting acceptance rates. This ultimately harms the students involved, as shown by the recent Canadian Federal Court decision. Students should be cautioned against relying on agents to submit their study permit applications,” Pietrocarlo cautioned.
Canada’s Federal Court decreed that it was a student’s obligation to ensure the accuracy of the contents of their Canadian study permit. This was after an international student from India was issued a study permit based on a falsified letter of acceptance (LOA), subsequently entering, and studying in Canada, but at a different school from the one listed on the falsified document.
Although the student claimed she was unaware the LOA was false, the Federal Court ruled it unreasonable for an international student to not review or verify the authenticity of their documents.
Students should verify applications
The court further confirmed that students, themselves, are responsible for reviewing and verifying their visa applications and made it clear that students who “rely on foreign agents – who are unaccountable under Canadian law – will be held responsible for misrepresentations, even if made unintentionally, by their agent, or unbeknown to the student”.
According to Pietrocarlo, however, most fraudulent cases have come from outside of Africa, but this is largely because, until recently, Canada was not a major destination for African students. “Nonetheless, the extent of misrepresentation by fraudulent agents was not insignificant and IRCC is instituting stringent oversight as a result, identifying 1,500 cases of suspected fraud in a recent investigation,” he said.
He added that the extent of misrepresentation by lone agents often goes undetected, but cases like the recent one decided by the Federal Court illustrate the harm to students – even if students are unaware of the misrepresentation. “This is why it’s important for students to rely on Canadian legal counsel.
“Based on our research and information from our institutional partners, about 50% of applicants from Africa don’t come through agents and, thus, are left on their own to handle the visa and immigration process – often leading to mistakes or incomplete applications,” he noted.
While the quality of African students seeking to enrol in Canadian universities was as good as that of any other country and met the admissions criteria, the problem often lay with the immigration application, noted another BorderPass official, Max Donsky.
Many agents’ speciality and strength lay in recruitment and admissions, while visa application and the whole migration and stay process was better handled by immigration lawyers, something that was not common in Africa.
“It would be good if agents handled recruitment and admissions and left the migration part to experts,” he told University World News. This, he added, would save students thousands charged by unqualified people posing as migration experts but with little knowledge and ability to guide the students.
“From our own experience in places like Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, the success rate for getting study permits rises to as high as 80% up from a low of 30%-35% where migration lawyers are used to apply for the permit,” Donsky disclosed.
“Of course, we are not saying we 100% guarantee admission, but our legal teams guide and support them throughout the process, including during their stay, with far better than usual outcomes,” he said.
Rejections blamed on high volume
The high study permit refusal rate was recently blamed on increases in the volume of applications as a result of a recruitment model that invites mass applications and on inexperienced downstream recruitment agents, according to an expert in the field.
The trend extended beyond Africa and has been affecting students in Asia, Latin America and some parts of Europe in the recent past, Earl Blaney, of the Canadian study and residency firm Study2Stay told University World News in an earlier interview.
He suggested that the overseas education agents authorise immigration practitioners as one way of helping to solve the problem of escalating refusal rates, which would also assist with student support throughout students’ stay, and dramatically improve the prospects of skills retention to support Canada’s economic class immigration goals.
While Blaney could not rule out racism as a reason for the refusal rate, he said the refusal rate could be due to the increasingly common aggregator model which entails universities contracting companies to recruit international students.
The companies, in turn, sub-contract agents around the world who are tasked with recruiting as many students as possible. The volume of applications means that, despite high visa refusal rates, diligent students do manage to ultimately
Multicultural Meanderings 