Shilpashree Jagannathan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, New Canadian Media Every year, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) uses automated tools to sort through hundreds of thousands of temporary resident visa applications — visitor visas, super visas, study permits — before a human officer ever opens the file. The department says this speeds up routine cases

Aloa Alota, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, New Canadian Media When Peri Wong enrolled in Queen’s University’s Graduate Diploma in Immigration and Citizenship Law program launched in 2021, she assumed immigration consulting was primarily about preparing applications. “I underestimated the legal nature of the profession,” she recalls. “I was surprised to discover how much of the