8 / 32
cants may be getting what amounts to a
free pass because officers are not attuned
to the kinds of fraud that they practice.
My research shows that individual-level
characteristics may lead officers to take
particular kinds of approaches to files. They
vary in howmuch weight they place on cer-
tain kinds of documents and what types of
factors they emphasize or de-emphasize as
they assess credibility. For instance, officers
have various ways of determining whether
a marriage is genuine: some concentrate
on conformity to certain rituals, some look
for compatibility, and some check whether
the relatives showed up for the wedding.
8
/ Canadian Government Executive
// January 2016
But even such individual differences in ap-
proach might be the product of social cir-
cumstances and are not necessarily purely
individual in nature. For example, some
officers are more facilitative than others.
But where a particular officer stands on
this continuummay depend, in part, on the
stage of his or her career. Newer, less-ex-
perienced officers tend to stick to the book
and loosen up as they gain confidence in
their abilities. It may also depend on how
they arrived at their present occupation.
Canada-based officers who previously per-
formed enforcement-related work in the
immigration department or Border Servic-
es may be more enforcement-minded than
facilitative.
It is, of course, entirely possible that indi-
vidual officers do entertain ethnic or racial
prejudices that cause them to look more
thoroughly at some applications and lead
them to refuse more visible minority ap-
plicants than white applicant. However,
the possibility that decisions are grounded
in racism should not be overemphasized.
After interviewing so many of them, I’ve
come to the conclusion that because refus-
ing an application entails more work than
approving one, and because officers must
meet processing targets and cope with
time constraints, they arguably have an
incentive to approve applications rather
than refuse them. Racist officers whose de-
cisions sprang from prejudice would prob-
ably have a higher refusal rate than their
colleagues in the same office. They would
Management
also have trouble contributing to the office
target, which would no doubt attract the
attention of management.
In
Canada and Immigration: Public Pol-
icy and Public Concern
, political scientist
Freda Hawkins explained that a mix of
“curiosity and frustration” led her to ex-
plore what went on in overseas visa offices
during the 1960s. Though she had spent
much of her academic career studying and
teaching about immigration policy and
management in Canada, she could find
few academics, leaders of NGOs, or even
immigration department employees who
“appeared to know or care where the visa
offices were or how they were run.” Dur-
ing her visits, Hawkins spent a few days
in each office, interviewing staff and ob-
serving routines and procedures. Her “per-
sonal impressions” of her tours were pub-
lished as a short chapter in her book. One
of the most notable focused on the merits
of immigration officers. Whereas the pub-
lic commonly regarded them as “rigid,
narrow-minded, rather petty [and] ... re-
strictionist,” she found them to be of “high
quality” and noted that they displayed “a
keen interest in the job and dedication to
it.” Some fifty years later, having conduct-
ed my own “tour” of overseas visa offices, I
cannot fault her conclusion.
Adapted from Vic Satzewich, Points of
Entry: How Canada’s Visa Officers De-
cide Who Gets In
. Vancouver: University
of British Columbia Press, 2015.
It would be wrong
to interpret visa
officers, and their
decision-making
procedures and
techniques, as
capricious.
Capriciousness is
not synonymous
with discretion.