Bringing friend for visit

[grumbles]

Greetings,
I have invited a friend, Zambian citizen, to come and visit me in Canada. She has been refused 3x's now, for the usual reasons - they do not believe she will return home because of travel history, purpose of visit and finances.
I offered this trip using my airmiles points, thinking it would be great fun to have her come and visit. We chat online almost weekly saying how our weeks have been. Who knew getting a visa would be such an ordeal!
I have known her since 2009, visited her there 6 times, while I have been on volunteer trips. She is a young married woman with a child. I am a retired, married woman, born in Canada, lived here my whole life, family has been in Canada since 1911.
In 2017 I took her with me to Zanzibar and have travelled with her within Zambia.
We have supplied all documents, including my letters of invitation which have been notarized (which to me is a legally sworn documents, I believe I could go to jail for lying on such an affidavit). She also had her letter of intent signed by a magistrate. We provided her tickets for flights here and back, medical coverage, financials for both herself (she is unfortunately out of work, but has a small farm business)as well as mine, and in my documents I have sworn that I will be paying all her expenses and she will be staying with us for the 3 weeks (I booked 3 weeks because of the duration of the flights taking up almost 5 days in themselves).
We are going to try again for next March.
In her new application, we will include photo's of ourselves together, we have a letter of support from someone who was on the volunteer trip with me when we met and still keeps in touch with her and myself.
I feel MY honesty is being doubted, after suppling all pertinent documentation, swearing I will put her on the plane home, proving I can pay for her visit, etc. Will even include a capture of the message when I invited her to come and visit.
Travel history for her is just the trip to Zanizbar, she can not afford to fly anywhere else to get more history. She has crossed the borders between Zambia & Botswana, Zimbabwe, but they don't stamp passports for that. She has very little funds, but I feel that should be unimportant as I have sworn to pay everything. It won't be a great expense, as she will stay with us and I will just take her sightseeing around our area.
What I thought would be a nice and fun and inexpensive gesture has turned very stressful!
Do we have any hope do you think? Can you think of anything that might help?
Thanks in advance.

 

[scylla]

Greetings,
I have invited a friend, Zambian citizen, to come and visit me in Canada. She has been refused 3x's now, for the usual reasons - they do not believe she will return home because of travel history, purpose of visit and finances.
I offered this trip using my airmiles points, thinking it would be great fun to have her come and visit. We chat online almost weekly saying how our weeks have been. Who knew getting a visa would be such an ordeal!
I have known her since 2009, visited her there 6 times, while I have been on volunteer trips. She is a young married woman with a child. I am a retired, married woman, born in Canada, lived here my whole life, family has been in Canada since 1911.
In 2017 I took her with me to Zanzibar and have travelled with her within Zambia.
We have supplied all documents, including my letters of invitation which have been notarized (which to me is a legally sworn documents, I believe I could go to jail for lying on such an affidavit). She also had her letter of intent signed by a magistrate. We provided her tickets for flights here and back, medical coverage, financials for both herself (she is unfortunately out of work, but has a small farm business)as well as mine, and in my documents I have sworn that I will be paying all her expenses and she will be staying with us for the 3 weeks (I booked 3 weeks because of the duration of the flights taking up almost 5 days in themselves).
We are going to try again for next March.
In her new application, we will include photo's of ourselves together, we have a letter of support from someone who was on the volunteer trip with me when we met and still keeps in touch with her and myself.
I feel MY honesty is being doubted, after suppling all pertinent documentation, swearing I will put her on the plane home, proving I can pay for her visit, etc. Will even include a capture of the message when I invited her to come and visit.
Travel history for her is just the trip to Zanizbar, she can not afford to fly anywhere else to get more history. She has crossed the borders between Zambia & Botswana, Zimbabwe, but they don't stamp passports for that. She has very little funds, but I feel that should be unimportant as I have sworn to pay everything. It won't be a great expense, as she will stay with us and I will just take her sightseeing around our area.
What I thought would be a nice and fun and inexpensive gesture has turned very stressful!
Do we have any hope do you think? Can you think of anything that might help?
Thanks in advance.

With three refusals, there is no point reapplying until something significant changes in the applicant's profile. Before you reapply (and assuming you haven't done so already), I would also strong recommend that you order the GCMS notes to see the detailed reasons behind the refusals.

Your affidavit unfortunately carries no weight with IRCC. Your honesty is not being doubted - the issue is that it's not really relevant to the application. To be successful in obtaining a TRV, the burden is on the applicant to provide evidence to make a strong application. This generally means the applicant needs to show strong ties to their home country such as employment, property ownership and bank accounts / assets. It strengthens the application if the applicant is able to fund their trip on their own - and generally weakens the application if the applicant has to rely on someone else to pay for their visit. It also strengthens the application if the applicant has previous travel to countries that require visas such as the US and UK. In the case of your friend, it certainly weakens her application substantially that she is unemployed. I would not recommend that she apply again until she is employed and has been employed for 6-8 months at least. The fact you are funding most of her trip is also working against her. She really should be showing her own savings at funding at least part of the trip. I know you feel this is unimportant - however for IRCC this is very important. You funding the whole or most of the trip actually significantly weakens the application and increases the chance of refusal.

I know this isn't what you want to hear. Again, I wouldn't recommend she reapply until something very significant in her profile changes.

 

[grumbles]

With three refusals, there is no point reapplying until something significant changes in the applicant's profile. Before you reapply (and assuming you haven't done so already), I would also strong recommend that you order the GCMS notes to see the detailed reasons behind the refusals.

Your affidavit unfortunately carries no weight with IRCC. Your honesty is not being doubted - the issue is that it's not really relevant to the application. To be successful in obtaining a TRV, the burden is on the applicant to provide evidence to make a strong application. This generally means the applicant needs to show strong ties to their home country such as employment, property ownership and bank accounts / assets. It strengthens the application if the applicant is able to fund their trip on their own - and generally weakens the application if the applicant has to rely on someone else to pay for their visit. It also strengthens the application if the applicant has previous travel to countries that require visas such as the US and UK. In the case of your friend, it certainly weakens her application substantially that she is unemployed. I would not recommend that she apply again until she is employed and has been employed for 6-8 months at least. The fact you are funding most of her trip is also working against her. She really should be showing her own savings at funding at least part of the trip. I know you feel this is unimportant - however for IRCC this is very important. You funding the whole or most of the trip actually significantly weakens the application and increases the chance of refusal.

I know this isn't what you want to hear. Again, I wouldn't recommend she reapply until something very significant in her profile changes.

Thank youi

 

[grumbles]

Thank you for the response.
I did get the GCMS notes, all 45 pages of them! They told me nothing until the end where it stated exactly the same as in the refusal letter. No help at all, to me at least. I got back in touch and asked for hand written notes from the offer, trying to better understand his or her thinking, but was told that there were none.
Very sad state of affairs here in Canada when you can't do a random act of kindness without the government thinking your doing something illegal.