Points of Entry: How Canada’s Immigration Officers Decide Who Gets In, by Vic Satzewich

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sonia D'Angelo, York UniversityCitizenship and Immigration could have written the manual on design truly nameless and faceless bureaucracy (8). In Points of Entry , timely and revealing study of the discretionary powers of Canadian visa officers, Vic Satzewich demystifies overseas visa offices and investigates an otherwise distant and understudied site. Satzewich's study is only the second - the first published in 1972 by Freda Hawkins - systematically explore the connections between immigration policy formation and its implementation inside visa offices. His agenda is query the very foreignness of overseas visa offices. The study contributes more comprehensive understanding of the immigration system by illustrating in what ways decisions are part of larger practice of policy implementation, institutional culture structures decisions, and the role of discretion in establishing the border between who gets in and who doesn't. Points of Entry documents, rigorously and in clear prose, precisely Canadian visa officers assess, contest, and make decisions about who is in/admissible in both the permanent and temporary resident categories, including spousal sponsorships, federal skilled workers applying as economic immigrants, and those seeking temporary residency in Canada through visitor visas. The research is directed by the theoretical task of evaluating the accuracy of claims that race-based biases mediate the decision-making processes of visa officers, claim the author contends must be taken seriously.The book offers convincing findings on how border control decisions are actually made that refute allegations that personal biases govern immigration decisions (15). Satzewich appraises claims of racial bias using qualitative and quantitative approach. His research design includes observations from four visa offices in Asia, two in Africa, and one each in the United States, Caribbean, South America, Europe, and the Middle East. The study consists of 128 semi-structured interviews with different types of visa-office personnel, including street-level bureaucrats, those in managerial positions, and locally engaged staff members, with various levels of influence over the decision-making process. Satzewich also includes observations of 42 interviews conducted by visa officers with varying classes of visa applicants. In its quantitative approach, the study evaluates visa approval rates for federal skilled workers and spousal sponsorships in several overseas visa offices determine whether such rates incarnate racial bias. Ultimately, the quantitative data undermines claims of racial bias by revealing comparable approval rates between visa offices that process applications for primarily or non-white applicants. Although the quantitative data assumes the locality of the applicant as marker of raciality, limitation of the data-collection strategies of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the author argues that approval rates count against claims that visa officers endeavour to keep Canada white (119).To make sense of the quantitative absence of racialized bias, Satzewich turns an ethnographic exploration of visa officers exercise their discretion and the kinds of typifications that inform their decisions. Here, he offers an exacting theoretical framework for understanding discretion and its role in the immigration system. The immigration system is often evaluated as beset by discretion, a largely negative feature making possible accusations of bias (37). As gatekeepers of national borders, visa officers make decisions that are mediated by multidirectional planes including macro-level forms of influence such as official policies, administrative procedures, and the global socio-economic milieu; micro-level contexts such as their work experience, individual or familial decisions emigrate, and client interaction; and the meso-level effects of organizational culture (36). …