IRCC Minister Transition Binder 2025-03

Visa Integrity: Strong Visas, Secure Borders Canada’s Focus on Visa Integrity

March 2025

Purpose

This Briefing is Intended to:

Provide overview of Canada’s screening
Review landscape and issues related to temporary resident visa (TRV) issuance
Discuss how the Temporary Resident Integrity Strategy (TRIS) is addressing TRV issues and what’s next
Discuss results

Background - Canada’s Visa Screening

• Canada screens all foreign visitors before they arrive; exceptions are U.S. citizens and U.S. Permanent Residents.
• Applying for a Canadian visa means:
  • Canada collected biometrics and vetted the applicant against Canadian criminal and U.S./UK/AUS/NZ immigration data
  • Our officers evaluated the applicant’s intent to stay illegally long-term
  • The applicant was screened for security and criminality concerns
• Anyone who fails this screening is refused permission to travel to Canada; evidence of deliberate fraud means an automatic five-year ban from applying.

How we Screen Against M5 and Canadian Sources

• Canada leverages multiple sources of information to inform risk and decision-making, including information-sharing arrangements with Migration 5 partners. Most importantly, Canada leverages automated screening of visa applications against U.S. immigration data in two ways today:
  • All visa applicants* are screened against immigration data using fingerprint biometric (checks are also done against M5 databases)
  • All visa applicants & [Redacted] are screened against a U.S. Department of State database using biographic info (name, date of birth, etc.)
• Canada is doubling down on U.S. data connections and our partnership:
  • [Redacted]
  • Canada and U.S. immigration information-sharing is governed by a formal Treaty—in 2024, we negotiated changes to include permanent residents of both countries (in addition to foreign nationals), allowing for automated reciprocal checks against immigration databases.

• Our officers also refer cases to Canadian Border and Intelligence agencies for additional, comprehensive admissibility screening based on any security or criminality concerns.

Biometric Footprint

Global Biometric Enrollment Footprint

166 Visa Application Centres overseas
130 U.S. locations
77 locations Services Canada

Expansive Biometric Screening

~7.99M queries in 2024
~3.56M enrolments in 2024

Challenges and Current Landscape

• Global Migration Trends: Increased migration and displacement (conflict, climate, economic), continued pressure & northbound flows in the Americas, increased state emphasis on borders.
• Current Decision-Making Pressures: Changing client behaviour and risk environment post pandemic - rising rates of real/attempted exploitation, increasingly sophisticated fraud, rising misuse of Canada’s TR program from clients applying to visit Canada with the actual intent of remaining long-term or crossing the Can-U.S. border illegally.
• Past Decision-Making Pressures: Ongoing integrity risk to TR Program—COVID backlog reduction measures in some cases resulted in misuse of Canada’s TR programs by those wishing to remain in Canada long-term.

Canada’s strategy for managed migration: Push the border out to screen visitors before they reach Canada—immigration policies & decisions can generate long-term consequences/outcomes (e.g., overstays, claims, illegal migration, recourse/litigation, removals).

Tightening Visa Screening to Combat Fraud

In recent years, TR programs designed to address international crises and significant post-COVID backlogs were abused by non-genuine TRs. Signaled need to adapt to the new high-risk migration context and address misuse and irregular migration.

Temporary Resident Integrity Strategy (TRIS)

• Introduced in Summer 2024 in response to growing misuse and irregular migration, the TRIS launched concrete action required to reduce visa fraud, identify new threats, and tighten visa screening, with a focus on top populations who were abusing the system.
• Positions Canada to safely welcome genuine visitors from across the world while remaining sustainable for years to come. Goal is to maintain ability to make timely decisions with the imperative to keep Canadians safe and our programs free of fraud.
• Designed to integrate policy, operational, and technological elements to take immediate action on all forms of irregular migration and exploitation that undermine Canada’s immigration program and sustain these efforts over the medium and long term.

Accomplishments

December 2023:

Revoked visitors Temporary Ministerial Public Policy designed to address COVID backlogs by reducing visa screening requirements and speeding up processing, but misused by many clients.

February 2024:

Imposed partial visa on Mexico → led to a reduction in asylum claims and southbound apprehensions (SBAs).

Spring 2024:

Struck table with U.S. to address rising levels of southbound apprehensions → resulting in month-by-month decreases.

Summer 2024:

Refocused efforts on overall screening and processing for high-risk countries using new indicators, recent intelligence, updated officer guidance and changes to risk triaging → resulting in increases in visa refusals and misrepresentation investigations. Application intake from key countries, including India, Bangladesh and Nigeria, has dropped as well.

November 2024:

IRCC published new guidance to the field emphasizing that officers have discretion to issue visas with a limited validity period.

Results of Stronger Visa Screening

At a glance – results of additional scrutiny, updated officer guidance and training, and a focus on countries generating the most visa abuse:

+16% Higher global visa refusal rate in 2024, with tighter screening for illegal intent.

9,000 Average number of investigations per month into visa misrepresentation in 2024.

-40% Fewer applications received in January 2025 than a year ago; deterrence of tighter screening.

81% India visa refusal rate in December 2024 (a top source of visa misuse, including southbound apprehensions and asylum claims).

+64% Increase in five-year bars for fraud in January 2025 compared to a year ago.

-28% Fewer asylum claims in January 2025 vs December 2024.

Results: Re-introduced visa screening for Mexico

Mexican nationals visa-required since March 2024, unless they hold a U.S. visa

-75% less southbound illegal crossings by Mexican nationals in 2024 than 2023*

• Reduced the ability of cartel members or associates to access Canada.

• 93% drop in monthly South Bound Apprehension numbers since policy change – 309 in February 2024 and 21 in January 2025.

Canada screens [Redacted] applicants against U.S. data:

• Includes all visa and eTA applicants
• [Redacted]

Mexico “Partial Visa” Status: Only applicants who hold valid U.S. NIV (Nonimmigrant Visa) or previous Canadian visa in last 10 years can apply for an eTA

Southbound Apprehensions: Priority Work Ongoing

98% Decrease in apprehensions since peak in June 2024 due to stronger visa screening and increased cooperation with U.S. Customs and Border Protection

55% Decrease in January crossings, compared to same month in 2024.

Leveraging U.S. data to identify risk patterns and cancel/refuse visas to non-genuine visitors.

Total SBAs by Month from January 2024 to January 2025

Jan: 809, Feb: 1102, Mar: 1305, Apr: 1791, May: 3154, Jun: 3437, Jul: 2848, Aug:2240, Sep:1649, Oct: 1,091, Nov:533, Dec: 370, Jan: 359

Stronger Authorities to Cancel Visas

• Secured more explicit legal authorities to cancel individual visas and eTAs in January 2025:
  • Streamlines our ability to cancel visas when we discover inadmissibility or illegal intent
  • Limits potential misuse and prevents nefarious actors from travelling to Canada
  • Supports Canada’s current review of high-risk visa cohorts for possible cancellation before they travel to Canada.

• Drafted, and announced intent to introduce legislation at first available opportunity to:
  • Mass cancel, suspend, or vary immigration documents, and applications in inventory, when deemed in the public interest.
  • Highly broad, highly flexible legal framework to response rapidly to threats/fraud

These concrete results and new authorities reinforce Canada’s commitment to a stronger Canadian border.

Next Steps and Key Action Items Underway

Investing in policy, process and technology to unlock ability to rapidly and constantly calibrate risk in response to events at the national, regional and global levels in the future.

Information-Sharing

• [Redacted]
• [Redacted]
• [Redacted]

Communications Plan

• Underway Winter 2024/25: Annual Advertising Campaigns on Safe and Orderly Migration (irregular arrivals) and Operational Pressures (fraud messaging targeting international students), running through to March 2025.

Technology Investments

• Digital visas and digital authentication of applicant passports will improve program integrity and are a critical tool for ongoing, end-to-end management of Canada’s immigration system; they better position IRCC to remotely detect and counter fraud, manage identity, and strengthen screening.