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Immigration applications in almost all permanent and temporary resident categories have been seeing higher refusals since 2023, according to the latest federal government data.
Toronto Star reports that the high rate of rejection in most cases, such as study and post-graduate work permits, are primarily the result of changing eligibility and policies.
However, critics are raising concerns that this has also been driven by the pressure to render decisions quickly and haphazardly to reduce a backlog.
Canada has reduced the annual intake of permanent and temporary residents for 2025, 2026, and 2027. It has also cut 3,300 positions in the Immigration Department. But, conversely, the number of people applying to come to Canada has not come down.
As of June 10, there were 2,189,500 applicants in process as against 1,976,700 in March. The number includes 842,800 people that have been in the queue longer than the department’s own service standards.
Critics say they are seeing more solid applications being tossed away, and refusals using boilerplate language have led to the same applicants re-applying over and over, as well as court appeals and litigation.
According to Immigration Department data, the refusal rates for all four permanent resident categories have crept up in the first five months of 2025: economic class, family class, humanitarian and compassionate of those otherwise not eligible for any program, and refugees with protected status and families.
But the most significant increases in refusals over the past two years came in the temporary resident categories. The rejection rates for study permits rose to 65.4 per cent from 40.5 per cent, visitor visas from 39 per cent to 50 per cent, postgraduation work permits to 24.6 per cent from 12.8 per cent, work permit extension to 10.8 per cent from 6.5 per cent, and work permits for spouses of study and work permit holders to 52.3 per cent from 25.2 per cent.
Meanwhile, study permit extensions and work permit refusals have remained steady.
Experts say permanent residence applications under the economic class have the lowest refusal rates because officials can easily manipulate the number of applications in the system by adjusting the qualifying scores to prevent backlogs from building up.
The higher refusal rate in the family class likely comes from migrants running out of options who may resort to marrying a Canadian for permanent residence.
Toronto lawyer Chantal Desloges believes the adoption of advanced analytics and automation in immigration application processing has contributed to the rising refusals because officers, under time pressure, may over-rely on what red flags are raised by AI when making decisions.
But the Immigration department has said no final decisions are made by artificial intelligence, and its tools do not refuse or recommend refusing applications.
With refusals skyrocketing, experts have said immigration officials must provide detailed and clear reasons to justify their decisions. Ottawa seems to have heeded that suggestion in a recent move to include officers’ notes in refusal letters to applicants.
