'Incredibly frustrating' visa delays could thwart another Montreal conference

Immigration backlogs concern students International students facing visa delays are concerned they may not make it to Canada to study. Immigration Lawyer Lev Abramovich explains.

OTTAWA — Another global conference in Montreal risks being derailed by Canada's delays in processing visas as well as rejections that critics argue punish those from poorer countries.

"It's incredibly frustrating and difficult for us to manage," said Mark Boyer, head of the International Studies Association, which is based at the University of Connecticut.

"There's a myth that it's harder to bring people here, to the United States, but it's actually a problem in Canada."

The group holds conferences across North America on social science, inviting historians and political scientists to present their research and hold panel discussions.

Yet entire panels planned for next month in Montreal are on hiatus because, in multiple cases, six participants on a panel all lack a visa to enter Canada.

Others like Maria Gabriela Vargas have been rejected. The Colombian political scientist studies gender in justice systems, but is now spending her time trying to recoup $2,600 in hotel, application and flight costs.

"It is so complicated, and it seems this is common for young people and (those from) the Global South," Vargas said in an interview from Colombia.

"We are trying to create international networks, decoloniality, non-discriminatory spaces and more equitable access to knowledge. This is completely opposite to that idea."

Vargas applied for a visa in December and was refused within a month, on the grounds she did not demonstrate financial means to support her stay in Canada.

She applied a second time with more documentation, but the consulate again denied her on the grounds she lacked "a legitimate business purpose in Canada."

Vargas said a Colombian agency that handles foreign visas told her that Canada is notoriously unreliable for issuing visas. She has filed a Privacy Act request to find out why she was so swiftly denied a visa.

Jennifer Fontanella, the ISA's operations director, said she's aware of about 600 of the 6,000 invited academics having visa issues, with 80 declined, hundreds waiting for a decision and at least a hundred withdrawing.

Numerous delegates reported similar issues when they tried to attend the Montreal conference of the American Political Science Association last September.

Last summer, IRCC caused an uproar when it denied visas for multiple African delegates for the International AIDS Conference, also held in Montreal, leading to on-stage accusations of racism.

The ISA faced visa delays for a Toronto conference in 2019. This time around, organizers worked with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to try preventing such snags.

Fontanella says the department issued an event code, which the ISA gave to visa applicants so IRCC could fast-track applicants and confirm they had been invited to present at the conference.

In granting visas, IRCC normally puts a heavy weight on the likelihood an applicant will actually return home, but the event code is meant to help alleviate this concern.

ISA still braced for visa issues, moving the conference registration deadline ahead so that applicants would have extra months for their visas to be processed.

Applicants from numerous countries are facing delays, and ISA has a large cohort in India where visas seem to take five months to be processed.

IRCC data updated Tuesday shows that visa applications take 217 days to process for people based in Britain and 212 days for people in France.

While citizens of those countries don't need visitor visas to come to Canada, academics from many developing countries based in Paris or London need a visa to attend a conference in Montreal.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not provide a comment Tuesday.

Fontanella said just one of 30 consulates she's contacted about the ISA's issues have responded, adding that emails to immigration officials have gone unanswered.

"We're constantly writing to the Canadian government and getting no response," said Fontanella. "I'm expecting the next three weeks to get ugly."

The group picked Montreal as it is one of about 10 cities in North America that has relatively cheap hotels clustered together, along with conference rooms, avoiding a need to rent an entire convention centre.

That system allows the ISA to contain registration costs.

The group is pondering virtual conferences, but Boyer warned that this leaves out people in several developing countries. "We're subject to the peculiarities of the Canadian immigration system."

In December, hundreds of delegates from developing countries missed out on the COP15 conference in Montreal due to visa issues that partly stemmed from the United Nations issuing late accreditations.

The issue has become so prevalent that a group of Ottawa researchers won a federal grant to study who is affected by Canada's visa refusals, including people attending one-time events and those seeking years-long study permits.

"It's hurting Canadians," said Meredith Terretta, a University of Ottawa history professor leading the VisaBarrier.ca project.

Her group is collecting data from those refused visas, and said the issue is hurting Canadian universities' attempt to have a more global student body.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 8, 2023.