Immigration misrepresentation in Canada

IRCC publishes the list rather than leaving it to be guessed at. Submitting false or altered versions of any of these is fraud on its own account: passports and travel documents, visas and exit and entry stamps, language results, proof of employment or job offers, letters of acceptance from learning institutions along with tuition receipts and transcripts, diplomas and degrees and apprenticeship or trade papers, police certificates and court documents, and DNA testing.

Proof of relationship is on the same list, and the department spells out what it means by that: certificates of birth, adoption, marriage, final divorce, annulment, separation, death or custodianship.

Two further categories sit outside the paperwork. The medical exam carries a duty to answer truthfully about existing and previous conditions, and false information given to the panel physician is treated as fraud. So is overstating how long you or somebody else was physically present in Canada on a PR card renewal or a citizenship application.

A reversed credit card payment is its own category with its own number. IRCC states that a chargeback during the visa application process is fraud, and that it can mean being banned from travelling to Canada for up to ten years, which is twice what section 40 carries.

Section 40(2)(a) gives two different starting points and the difference between them is measured in years. Where the determination is made outside Canada, the five years run from a final determination of inadmissibility. Where it is made in Canada, they run from the day the removal order is enforced.

That second date is the one that surprises people. A finding made against somebody inside Canada starts no clock at all until they have actually left. The mechanism is section 44: an officer who is of the opinion that a person in Canada is inadmissible may prepare a report, and if the Minister finds the report well founded it goes to the Immigration Division for an admissibility hearing, or in prescribed circumstances the Minister may make the removal order directly. Each of those steps takes time, and none of it counts.

Section 40(3) runs alongside. A foreign national who is inadmissible under section 40 may not apply for permanent resident status during that period, which closes the route most people would otherwise be working towards.

More often than the usual summary of it suggests. Section 64(3) is written narrowly and quoted broadly, and reading it carefully changes the answer for whole categories of people.

What it says is that no appeal may be made under subsection 63(1) in respect of a decision based on a finding of inadmissibility on the ground of misrepresentation, unless the foreign national in question is the sponsor's spouse, common-law partner or child. Subsection 63(1) is one specific appeal: the one a sponsor brings against a refusal to issue a family class permanent resident visa. That is the appeal section 64(3) removes, and it names no other.

A permanent resident facing a removal order appeals under subsection 63(3), which is a different appeal. Section 64(1) closes appeals for security, violating human or international rights, sanctions, serious criminality and organized criminality, and misrepresentation is not on that list.

Where no appeal exists, the route is the Federal Court. Leave and judicial review tests whether the finding was reasonable and whether the process was fair, on the record that was before the officer.

Three things, and they do different jobs. A temporary resident permit under section 24 lets an officer admit somebody who is inadmissible where it is justified in the circumstances. It is discretionary, it may be cancelled at any time, and one issued outside Canada does not make the holder a temporary resident until they have been examined on arrival.

Waiting out the period is the second. Section 40(2)(a) sets it at five years and it ends on its own, without an application to clear it.

Challenging the finding is the third, and it is the only one that removes the finding rather than working around it. It is also the one with a deadline measured in days rather than years, which is why it is decided first.