Canada Visa rejections- more of whims and fancies than logical reasons

While Canada is liberal in granted immigration, it is not so liberal in granting short term visitor visa. One thing that always intrigues me as to why refuse visitor visa to a person who is otherwise also eligible to immigrate to Canada?

Canada immigration system and process is very transparent. A small effort and you can know if you are eligible or not. In such cases, where a person is eligible for immigration in a legal way, denial of short term visas is not understood. This happens even in cases where a person has extensive travel history.

In some extreme cases like a recent one, a grieving son in China was rejected for a visitor's visa to Canada for his mother's funeral. Cases for rejection of visas to close relatives to attend marriages are common. There is no clear visa given for visa rejection and only one or more of the pre-printed reasons are ticked, which often are not sufficient to describe the reason for rejection.

In another case of visa rejection, an elderly lad about 70 years of age was allowed visa to Canada to attend wedding of her niece while her accompanying son, otherwise well settled and with extensive travel history to Europe and USA was denied visa.

Every year about 200000 potential visitors are denied visas to Canada. Once visa is rejected, an applicant has no choice but either to apply again paying hefty charges or hire an expensive advocate, something which not every body can afford.

Post 9/11, most cases of rejection of visa are from non-european countries. While visa pproval rate from Europe is about 84%, it is about 33% for Lahore and goes further down to just 3% from Afghanistan.

The appeal process is quite cumbersome and one needs professional help for it. It is quite expensive also given the high cost of advocates.

This is high time that Canada simplifies the review process so that the genuine applicants can do so without needing to hire a professional.