Full Text of the Canadian Embassy’s Response
The following letter was sent to Bill Brydon by email. The author has given us permission to publish it in the Mind Sports Zine.
From: Manicom, David -BEIJING -IM
Full Text of the Canadian Embassy’s Response
Sent: July 26, 2000 12:30 PM
Subject: Refusal of Chinese Chess Delegation
Dear Mr. Brydon:
This is in reply to your faxed letter of 17 July concerning the refusal of a group of Chinese chess players. Unfortunately I am not in a position to provide you with much information. The Canadian Privacy Act does not permit me to give you any information from the visa files of individuals without their written consent. In any event, since you have posted your article on the Internet, the elements of the story are already out there and there is little our office can do at this point to change the perceptions you have created.
Some facts. The large majority of applications for Chinese individuals to visit Canada are approved. Visa officers take no pleasure in refusing any application. When faced with a deadline imposed by the group in question, however, and in the absence of complete information requested by our office well in advance, a visa officer must face the reality that, on a daily basis, individuals issued visitor visas by our office turn out to have misrepresented themselves. Often we have bona fide delegations which have, however, "added" illicit members to the group. The visa officer in such a circumstance is not stating that the individuals who have made the applications are criminals or that they are sure to stay in Canada, only that the officer is not satisfied, at this time, that they are genuine visitors. I would like to be able to give you the whole narrative of this case, and the steps our office took to verify that this was a legitimate group (remember that visa officers are not experts on Chinese chess and therefore are reliant on documentation provided), but unfortunately without the consent of the applicants I am unable to do so. No visa officer takes any pleasure in deciding that, in some cases, a visa cannot be issued based on the information on hand at the time the decision must be made. Officers at this post make decisions on over 200 visa applications per day, and approve approximately 75% of them.
I am baffled that you find our standard refusal letters, which state the legal reasons the visas could not be approved, and which are used at Canadian visa offices all over the world, to be insulting. I have never heard this comment in my years of service. It is not pleasant to be refused a visa. But the phrasing in the letter could hardly be construed as insulting, much less "snotty." Our letters discourage applicants from submitting further unless there is new or different information available in order to advise individuals not to waste their time and effort and money submitting identical applications over and over in the hope of a different outcome. You appear to find this menacing: I believe it is essential to give applicants realistic information and advice and that it
would be irresponsible to do otherwise. Again, this is standard phrasing at visa offices all over the world.
Your questions with regard to policy changes concerning visits of cultural figures or chess players are all based on a premise of negativity and mean-spiritedness on the part of the embassy and our section's staff. Their enormous hours of work, including many weekend hours in the summer,
in an attempt to finalize as many visa applications as possible, most of them positively, speaks to this issue, as does the regular decision of the Canadian government in recent years to add more and more staff to the office here because of the importance Canada places in facilitating travel between our two countries.
Your decision to post your article before receiving basic information from us, rather than after, is not one I prefer to express my opinion on.
This was an unfortunate incident. You have presumed, knowing little about the details concerned, that all of the fault lies on the side of our office. This is not the case.
Sincerely,
David Manicom
Manager,
Non-Immigrant Visa Section
Canadian Embassy
Beijing
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