U.S. Consular posts in Canada limit nonimmigrant visas issued to certain non-Canadian applicants
With increasing regularity, U.S. consular posts in Canada are refusing visas to third country national applicants (TCNs) with foreign degrees who have not previously been issued H-1B visas from their home posts, and are referring them to their home countries for visa processing. Stewart Rabinowitz, of the Dallas-based firm Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, offers some informed commentary on the matter.
U.S. consular posts in Canada are increasingly refusing visas to third country national applicants (TCNs) with foreign degrees who have not been previously issued H-1B visas from their home posts, and are referring them to their home countries for visa processing. U.S. posts in Canada have long shown a distrust of degrees that are not from the U.S. or Canada, in large measure due to past discoveries of fraudulent degrees from certain parts of the world.
While US posts in Canada do not publish this as official policy, they provide the following warning for H-1B applicants, “Evidence of qualifications must be original or certified copy. Consular offices in Canada may refuse to issue a visa to H-1B applicants if their education and/or work experience is based solely or predominately from a country other than the U.S. or Canada.”
Examining this issue from a historical perspective, Stewart Rabinowitz of the Dallas-based law firm Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz makes reference to situations that would arise in both Canada and the United States involving purported nurses from the Philippines. “Women, and occasionally men, would present nursing degrees from the Philippines that could not be verified, and in some cases turned out to be fraudulent,” Rabinowitz asserts, “an element of distrust became a natural outgrowth.”
More specifically, Rabinowitz considers the Canadian policy in light of policy at the US post in Ciudad Juarez. “The position of US posts in Canada mirrors that of the US post in Ciudad Juarez (“CDJ”) regarding nonimmigrant applicants who last entered the US in B-2 visitor visa status and who later changed to a different status through USCIS. If a foreign national enters the US in B-2 visitor visa status, changes status to H-1B, and then applies for an H-1B visa at CDJ, CDJ will not accept the visa application. The concern is that there may be inconsistencies between what the foreign national said to obtain the visitor’s visa and what the foreign national did by subsequently changing status while in the US which are best resolved by the home country. Putting aside concerns of whether such a position is actually justified, the policy also lessens the volume of third country nationals – non-Canadians – applying for nonimmigrant visas at US posts in Canada.”
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