Get Engaged in the Visa Barrier Project:

Researchers, conference organizers, program directors, international office administrators, and all other stakeholders invested in equitable international mobility in higher education are invited to take up use of the Visa Barrier tool to gather data about the experience of researchers (invited professors, doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows) who must apply for a visa or permit to enter Canada.

Why?

Canada has embraced global “brain circulation.” Universities are increasingly attracting international students, researchers are developing wide-ranging partnerships, and Canada plays a growing role in global organizations dedicated to connecting science and society for the benefit of humanity. 

However, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)’s high rate of refusal of study and temporary residence permits to visa-required researchers is threatening to undermine Canada’s research achievements on the world stage. Preliminary investigations, from journalistic inquiries in English and in French, to legal analyses, to witness testimony before the House of Commons, show that such permits are, in relative terms, disproportionately denied to researchers from African countries, all of which IRCC designates as visa-required. 

Research and advocacy networks across Canada, including the African Scholars Initiative, the Canadian Association of African Studies, and the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, have shown how visa refusals undermine scholarship, international partnerships and collaboration, and postgraduate supervision. The visa barrier excludes many visa-required researchers from participating in knowledge mobilization via international forums, partnerships and exchanges. This exacerbates existing North-South asymmetries in global knowledge flows.

What insights can help Canada pursue equitable international mobility in higher education?

The Visa Barrier project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, uses a web-based tool to collect anonymized data from visa-required African researchers. Over time, these data will reveal an approximate profile of those researchers to whom Canada denies right of entry, highlighting patterns related to income, gender, marital status, country of origin, race, Visa Application Centre, and highlighting discrepancies in the items of “proof” that IRCC requires of applicants. These data will be used to inform the Canadian government and Canadian universities of challenges that visa-required African researchers face, providing an evidence-based argument for developing immigration policies and university internationalization strategies to surmount the visa barrier. 

Although the project focus is on researchers from Africa’s visa-required countries, the web application is designed inclusively to enable use by any university-level student or researcher from any IRCC-designated visa-required country in the world.

How does it work?

If you are willing to participate, please follow this link to enroll in the project as an engaged stakeholder. Registered stakeholders may then invite visa-required researchers by providing them with a unique, secure link to a one-time access survey of their visa application experience. The anonymized data* are sorted by category, allowing the research team to produce aggregate tables over time, building a foundation for the continuous improvement of visa application processes.

* This research has received University of Ottawa ethical clearance for research with human participants. Information about the project ethics protocols can be found here.