If you have submitted any type of immigration or visa application to Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), you are entitled to see the detailed notes of the immigration officer who has made the decision on the application.
Unfortunately, only a Canadian citizen or permanent resident with the proper credentials can submit this request if the applicant is located outside Canada.
Our office submits this request for the officer’s notes on behalf of any applicant who wants to know the detailed grounds for the refusal of their immigration application. We are also happy to review your notes with you to explain what the immigration officer’s notes mean.
Find Out Why Your Visa Application Was Refused
If you have been refused a study permit, visitor visa, work permit, permanent residence, or any other type of application, you received a refusal letter from IRCC with the officer’s reasons for refusal of the application. However, the refusal letter only contains basic information with generic phrases to show which reasons for refusal apply to your case.
The refusal letter does not go into detail about what exact circumstances in your case caused the officer to refuse the application.
For example, many visitor visa refusal letters state that the officer “does not believe the applicant will leave Canada”. This type of generic reasoning does not explain what went wrong with your application, or how you can address this problem in a new application.
However, the officer’s notes about the grounds for refusal will go into more detail about the problems in the application, which will help you understand why the application was refused and how you can do better next time.
Your Application Has Been Refused – What Can You Do Now?
Even if your Canadian immigration application has been refused by IRCC, you can still submit a new application at any time.
However, if you do not change your strategy and address the officer’s concerns in the refusal letter, the new application is just as likely to be refused.
If you get the detailed officer’s notes, you can understand the real reasons for refusal and use this information to make your new immigration application more likely to be approved.
Immigration Applications Which Have Gone Beyond the Stated Processing Time
You can also submit a request for the GCMS (Global Case Management System) notes on an application which is still in process. If your application has gone beyond the processing time stated on the IRCC website at the time the application was submitted, then you can request the GCMS notes to see where your application is in processing.
Due to covid-19, all immigration applications both inside and outside Canada are experiencing longer than usual processing times, with family sponsorship applications submitted prior to November 2020 taking an extremely long time even to receive the Acknowledgement of Receipt email.
Unfortunately, a request for GCMS notes cannot be done on an application which has not yet received a file number as this means that the application is not yet in process. Canadian immigration applications submitted online receive an Acknowledgement of Receipt usually within an hour of submission. Paper-based applications can take as long as several months to receive an Acknowledgement of receipt. Once you have the file number as stated on the Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR), you can submit a request for the application’s GCMS notes.
