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September 17, 2024

Kandath v. M.C.I. 2024 FC 1130

Ms. Kandath is an Indian national who had applied for a Study Permit visa to study at a university in Canada. She had planned to pursue another Masters degree.

Ms. Kandath included a detailed several page Study Plan in her Study Permit visa application.  In it she set out in detail his rationale for choosing the program of study at the Canadian college.  However, a visa officer refused her application. 

The visa officer refused Ms. Kandath’s Study Permit visa application on the following ground:

  • The course content and level of the program of study in Canada appeared to overlap studies which Ms. Kandath had already completed in India, and thus the proposed program did not adequately demonstrate a logical progression of studies. 

Eastman Law Office successfully argued before the Federal Court that the visa officer’s refusal decision was unreasonable because it lacked responsive justification. That is, the officer’s reasons failed to respond to Ms. Kandath’s evidence that ran contrary to the officer’s conclusion. For example, though Ms. Kandath already had a Masters, her evidence before the visa officer was that the Masters program she wanted to pursue in Canada was totally different from the Masters she already had.

In granting Ms. Kandath’s application for judicial review the Federal Court held:

[9] The Officer did not need to accept everything put forward by the Applicant, but was required to offer some explanation about how this essential information factored into their analysis. While Visa Officers need not give exhaustive reasons to uphold the reasonableness of their decisions, this does not relieve them from the need to address evidence on key points that contradicts key aspects of their decision, even if briefly (Mahdavi v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 629 at para 19). That was not done here. 

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