Mastodawn

Canadian immigration appears less evil to me but also a heck lot more incompetent and confusing to deal with

(I’ve actually never figured out how to get a work visa to Canada and I’ve figured it out for most countries. Like even the How to Apply page is.. vague. And I’m a native English speaker with international immigration experience. I think you’re supposed to use an agent, most of the time, but I refuse. Anyway, that’s not on the cards anymore and I would die in the cold)

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2026/03/21/bc-uk-midwife-work-permit-denied-english-test/

U.K. midwife facing deportation from B.C. after work permit denied over English test

A Victoria-based midwife and her patients have been left in the lurch over a problem with paperwork.

CityNews Vancouver

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Adrianna Tan

This article talks about them using a spreadsheet-based decision-making tool that doesn’t look much different from Excel. It looks extremely basic and not very good and I’m willing to bet it’s responsible for a lot of pain in the system. Most immigration agencies have much more advanced software for their specialized use case or workflows.

I’m not willing to claim things are more humane for US immigrants (it’s not), but there are many more avenues for legal action against USCIS through other U.S. govt branches (yes this costs money but there is also pro bono support sometimes). In many countries it mostly feels like you just take the decision that you’ve been handed down arbitrarily.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/immigration-canada-ircc-technology-1.7632130

Immigration lawyers concerned IRCC's use of processing technology leading to unfair visa refusals | CBC News

Immigration professionals and people applying to enter Canada say they're increasingly getting refusal letters they think don't make sense — leading them to wonder whether their cases are being fully and properly reviewed by a human being.

CBC

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Adrianna Tan Mar 22

I also generally feel like when someone says ‘American immigration is awful and inhumane’ the vast majority of Americans are like yep absolutely I hate it and I’m sorry

And many people from many places who are like ‘Omg Murica is so bad’ are also very likely to be like ‘well it is true immigrants are responsible for all of my country’s problems’

Welcoming people but evil system on the one hand, bad system but unwelcoming people on the other (this is not specifically about Canada, which I know is mostly welcoming. But the anti immigrant stuff is also wrapped up in a polite culture I don’t like or understand. Just give it to me straight, like the Americans. Make movies about it. Wear a hat. Something.)

This is not pro - Murica toot. This is a ‘I personally really dislike polite racists in most Anglo settler countries because they are just culturally incompatible with me so I can’t be arsed to actually try to live in those places personally’ thing

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Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK Mar 22

@skinnylatte Canada is more than likely to try UK tactics with a USA public sector budget, so it most probably *is* Excel (possibly with VBA, or worse a whole load of VLOOKUP/INDEX functions all nested) being used to make the decisions..

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Adrianna Tan Mar 22

@vfrmedia USA public sector budgets are huge and software projects massive and convoluted.. other types of problems

(I used to say working in SF that we had more money than most countries)

(My boss was British. She would say ‘this is weird no body has ever asked me to cut costs! Or asked me how much anything cost! Or to justify expenditure by reducing costs!’) but again a rich city / state thing

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Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK Mar 22

@skinnylatte bizzarely every time I've been to a USA public service website to try and help friends there with adulting stuff (assuming that I'm not outright blocked for trying to access from a foreign country, which is very common nowadays), it looks like they've used the cheapest commercial service possible to deliver the actual service (maybe the budgets are swallowed by multiple layers of management and outsourcing contracts) and UI is different across every service/state or even local region (although maybe in UK we are used to having a *very* good govt web UI, although behind the scenes the services are run on string and gaffer tape and everything feeds into Azure databases and MS365)

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Adrianna Tan Mar 22

@vfrmedia that’s because of the complete decentralization of govt here. Every agency, across federal, state, local, does its own thing. Some do it better than others. And yes the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

I like to explain Singapore / UK style govtech work to colleagues and, they don’t understand it because even here in SF the mayor couldn’t possibly say ‘everybody use the same website’, it just.. isn’t a thing. It wouldn’t even be possible. During Covid I had to work with public health depts at federal, state, local city, and other local city / county (multiple) to do simple public health things.

I think that’s both good and bad (unequal distribution of things, but also I’ve come around to believing that decentralization is the only reason this country hasn’t imploded many times over)

The worst agencies just give Deloitte the same contracts over and over

But the practice of digital services has evolved and some states and cities do a better or comparable job now

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cwicseolfor Mar 22

@skinnylatte Having zero *personal* experience but a lot of international friends this was my impression, too, that in other countries there’s sort of an equality of total subjection to an unaccountable system, and in the US the system is set up to be a covert privilege and means test.

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cwicseolfor Mar 22

@skinnylatte Addendum: privilege, means, and *entitlement.*

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Adrianna Tan Mar 22

@cwicseolfor I think there’s also been a longer history of communities responding to an overtly racist immigration system and building some political power in that sense. Because so much of early U.S. immigration law was built to keep out the Chinese, there is a long history and practice of the AAPI community providing translation, legal services, pooling together resources to fight back. I feel there is a more expansive definition of what it means to be American compared to elsewhere. Asian American for example includes all Asians including undocumented people, who don’t have citizenship and won’t.

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Gordon J Holtslander Mar 22

@skinnylatte Budget cuts are about to wreck Canada’s immigration system

It’s going to get worse our somewhat newly elected “Liberal” government is doing the typically conservative practice of cutting back social programs, leaves wealth favouring tax, funds military…

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/budget-cuts-are-about-to-wreck-canadas-immigration-system/

Budget cuts are about to wreck Canada’s immigration system - CCPA

Crunching the numbers on the announced cuts at Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada shows a bloodbath in the making

CCPA -

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Gordon J Holtslander Mar 22

@skinnylatte Canada’s 3rd party, the NDP is choosing a new leader (the party only won 7 seats as Canada voted Liberal in response to Trump). Candidate Avi Lewis wants to reform our immigration system and policies:

“a single-tier immigration system based on permanent residency and status on arrival that gives rights and stability like our grandparents received when they first came to this country. We need an immigration system that reunites families, welcomes refugees fleeing wars around the world, and does not create two classes of workers. “

https://newcanadianmedia.ca/federal-ndp-candidate-avi-lewis-says-canadas-immigration-system-is-broken-and-promises-sweeping-reforms/

Federal NDP candidate Avi Lewis says Canada's immigration system is broken and promises sweeping reforms - New Canadian Media

Lewis lays out his vision for newcomers, temporary foreign workers, refugees and students

New Canadian Media