Audit of the Immigration Program
Canadian Consulate General – Seattle
5.7. Admissibility
The purpose of this section was to review the mission-level framework that generates medical, criminality and security admissibility information.
Medical
There is no Canada-based medical officer at the Consulate General in Seattle. All designated medical practitioners in the United States send their results to the Medical Services Branch at NHQ, which examines the designated medical practitioners’ findings. Their decisions are entered into the Branch’s database, the Immigration Medical System, which in turn downloads them into the responsible mission’s CAIPS database. The next day, the visa office receives a list of cases on which medical decisions are available.
Criminality and Security
Under the present RPC-satellite structure in the United States, criminality and security screening is done “up front” by the Buffalo RPC. Buffalo requests police certificates but does not enter a criminal decision in CAIPS. That decision is entered at the satellite. When Seattle receives immigrant files from Buffalo, the security decision is already recorded in CAIPS. Nevertheless, the interviewing officer is the ultimate decision maker in this matter and it is up to him or her, by means of a thorough interview, to assess the case at hand before accepting the RPC’s decision in CAIPS.
With over 95 percent of their cases coming from offshore, it is to be expected that Seattle officers will sometimes find it complex to arrive at sound conclusions about the background of applicants they interview. A review of files taken at random showed that police records are inevitably obtained before cases are finalized. As well, discussions with the Mission’s officers revealed that they are aware of their responsibility to thoroughly examine an applicant’s background and of the authority they possess to reverse an RPC pass mark.
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