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Does the eye in the sky check your online profile (i.e. your social media accounts) and use it against you in your immigration applications? The ‘eye in the sky’ is the IRCC for this article.
How does IRCC use your online profile & information such as your social media accounts to verify the information you included in your application forms?
It’s common sense. Right? The younger generation uses LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, even Snapchat and others all the time to check on their neighbors, classmates, and so forth. The government can do that too. Even more, there are other tools on the internet IRCC can use to verify the information you have submitted for your IRCC immigration application.
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This is the information they can extract from your social media accounts:
* Your current occupation & employer.
* Your work history.
* Your residing country.
* Your relationship status.
* Your family composition.
* Maybe even your travel history.
* And anything else you voluntarily post on your public social media profiles.
We’ll provide you specific examples of how this information can be used to verify your application information with the IRCC and perhaps even use it against you.
The most obvious example is relationship status. You are going through a spousal or common-law sponsorship from either inside or outside Canada, and your Facebook status shows single. Or maybe you claimed you are a same-sex couple and on your online profile you have photos of yourself kissing a member of the opposite sex, this can hurt your application. Or maybe you have photos with somebody completely different on your social media profile v. the person who you are sponsoring or being sponsored as your partner/spouse.
We can confirm that overseas embassies would do more online research than inside Canada applications, and same-sex couples do get a quick check each time if the supporting documents are not as strong. Another example is that if you have a lot of photos posted on your social media account of friends and loved ones, but none of your spouse or partner, it can also raise concerns for the officer and perhaps motivate them to dig deeper.
This is all still considered ‘lightweight’ checking. Back in the days when the Federal government was stricter, maybe 10 years ago or more, they’d send people to your home to physically check if you were living together under one roof in case you applied while inside Canada. Obviously, the government still has the power to do this, but they have not continued these practices for spousal and common-law sponsorships during the Liberal government’s tenure – or at least it’s very rare. They still do check physically on certain cases, through CBSA officers, but it’s for a variety of other matters and concerns they may have.
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You claimed you are an operations manager for a large restaurant chain, but your online social media shows that you are a cook and so does your LinkedIn work history & profile.
Or maybe even worse, you claimed you have a job, but in your online profile, it shows that the last time you worked was 5 years ago or maybe that you are even retired now.
Or maybe you are an executive manager of a cabling company but in fact, your online social media profile indicates that you are a self-employed cabling contractor.
Keep in mind that if you have photos of you and your friends or family in another country or maybe even inside Canada, but you claimed otherwise on your application that could also raise some red flags for the IRCC officer.
The family composition can also be checked online. You claimed you have only brothers or sisters and you are being sponsored by a new Canadian spouse, but your online photos show you taking care of and hugging “your children” in your home country – that can also raise concerns for IRCC.
For overseas applicants who apply for a work permit based on a genuine offer of employment from a Canadian company, the IRCC will definitely dig into your work history or current employer through their overseas embassies. If you claimed that you are a cook or store supervisor at a retail store or restaurant and this location cannot be found anywhere online or through Google maps, then the IRCC officer may wonder if it’s real. Or maybe the company shows that it’s closed on Google maps for the past 1 year – that’s also concerning to IRCC.
Keep in mind that Startup Visa applicants can go through similar scrutiny both for their work permits and PR applications. Does your online professional profile match what you are claiming on paper?
Another key fact to consider as an applicant is in case you are in an IRB or IAD tribunal, the office of the immigration minister will dig up as much information as possible online, offline, and anything they can get their hands on to discredit your claims. Whether it’s an asylum application, spousal, or another type of family sponsorship appeal, they will be digging deep. Very deep. Be ready and be careful!
If you’re planning to immigrate to Canada and you’re looking for some guidance and support, you’re at the right place! We are licensed and we have successfully supported applicants from more than 47 nationalities to apply for Canadian immigration through Studies, Sponsorship, and Business. Get a FREE email assessment, click here.
Many people ask us; What if I have no social media account or change the privacy settings so only my friends and family can see my profile. I tell them that it’s 100% possible and perfectly fine. IRCC only uses the info online that you voluntarily make public. There is no rule against not having a public profile.
It’s also important to consider that if IRCC finds discrepant information online about your application, it’s not a guaranteed refusal or the end of the world, but what it does is raise concerns and suspicions and can lead to messy application such as delays, PFL’s, refusals or more in-depth interviews. Everything you don’t want for your immigration application to Canada.
Besides social media accounts here are some other online tools IRCC officers use to check on your application information:
Our favorite tool is the ‘Wayback Machine’ which is like a time machine of the internet. It’s free to use and I recommend you test it out for fun. Anyone can check any public website’s history, how it looked, and what information was posted in the past 26 years. It includes web pages, video, audio, text, images, and even software programs. A total of 735 billion web pages are archived in this internet time machine. So, you may ask how can the IRCC use this tool. We’ll provide you with two examples in this article and we’ll leave the rest to your imagination:
1: You are a Startup Visa applicant, and created and hosted your website 1 month before the IRCC sends you a request for information & progress report but you claim to be active for the past 2 years selling to customers online;
2: You claim 1 year of employment at a company that posts its key employee photos & names on its website. 3 months ago your photo or name was not on their website. That’s odd.
I’ll let you figure out the rest using the ‘way back’ internet archive machine.
Another common example is checking the shareholders/directors of registered companies in your home country or in Canada. In many countries, these are public records of registered companies, and if you claim to be a director or shareholder of multiple companies, and your supporting documents are not clear, then a quick search online may provide contradictory results for the IRCC officer reviewing your application. The IRCC can also check if the directors or shareholders of the company offering you a ‘genuine’ job inside Canada would be in any way related to the overseas applicant. This is 100% allowed – to be related – but if the applicant’s work history and supporting documents are not solid, the IRCC officer may find an excuse to refuse the application.
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This is the IRCC officer’s single most used and favorite tool for online research. IRCC officers both inside Canada and outside regularly use Google for a basic search.
Would your business plan under C10, C11, or C12 create significant benefits? Are there other competitors in that neighborhood? Are there any buildings or stores where you claim to be purchasing one or setting one up? Is the office building you rented a unit in for your upcoming business a commercial or residential condo building? Is the business such as a store or restaurant you claim to be working for in your home country even active or operational?
The sky is the limit with online searches and not to forget that IRCC these days is using AI more and more. They have not caught up to the US yet which has some heavy-duty AI which scours the entire internet and social media accounts to look for keywords and texts you or your acquaintances may have posted that they consider as a security threat. That’s some heavy-duty Mission Impossible stuff – but not at the IRCC’s disposal right away.
Maybe in a few years, they’ll cross-integrate their existing AI tools such as WatchTower and Chinook to also research applicants’ online social media profiles and to report discrepancies to the officer reviewing your file. Time will tell. Be ready.
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