Transit visa rejection possibilities

[kiwish]

I know it's going to be a very hypothetic question, but it's affecting us quite a lot and I can see there's a few smart people here

Question:
What are possibilities of rejecting transit visa for an entire family (7 people, 2 parents, 2 children one of which is with family and 2 of their own children)? They do have strong connections with their country (each adult owns a property back in Colombia and has a job).

Background:
I'm getting married to my Colombian fiance and we want to ship her whole family for the wedding. For 7 people the price difference is important and currently Canadian Air is offering tickets for 7 of them thousands of dollars cheaper than any other airline. The problem is transit visa - we need to purchase the tickets in order to apply for it, but we need to spend almost $10k to purchase the tickets with a small possibility of visa rejection. That makes me a little bit sweaty. Because the tickets are on promotion cancellation fee is $400 (easy math it would be $2800 loss in case of visa rejection).

Now this is all theoretical but what I don't want is some kind of ridiculous rule to pop out out of nowhere that there's a risk for the entire family to stay in Canada (which I can't see possible since they'd need to go through the customs at the airport again right?). All we want them to do is to change planes don't even get out of the airport.

Any wise tips would be much appreciated, thank you very much and Happy New Year!

[Edit info: Both tickets and visa we need for September 2018 so there's no rush, we just want to get tickets early to save money]

 

[scylla]

There's no guarantee a transit visa will be approved. We do certainly see refusals here.

Their chances of approval depend on their overall profiles. One important factor is their past travel. If they have quite a bit of past travel to countries requiring visas (e.g. US, UK) - this will increase the chances of approval. Being able to demonstrate strong ties to one's home country increases the chances of approval as well.

Anyone transiting through Canada can easily claim refugee status in Canada while in transit. That's typically what CIC wants to ensure doesn't happen.

So short answer is that there's always some possibility of refusal.

 

[kiwish]

Thanks for the prompt reply. We do know that there's a possibility of visa refusal but good point about refugee status, I didn't consider that part. And we know that Colombia is quite big on refugees so now I'll do some research on that. We'll try to talk to the embassy in Bogota and see if there's anything they can help before we purchase flights in order to increase the probability. In the end, we'll probably gamble.

There's no guarantee a transit visa will be approved. We do certainly see refusals here.

Their chances of approval depend on their overall profiles. One important factor is their past travel. If they have quite a bit of past travel to countries requiring visas (e.g. US, UK) - this will increase the chances of approval. Being able to demonstrate strong ties to one's home country increases the chances of approval as well.

Anyone transiting through Canada can easily claim refugee status in Canada while in transit. That's typically what CIC wants to ensure doesn't happen.

So short answer is that there's always some possibility of refusal.