The effects of automation and AI on immigration to Canada

Canada's immigration management is in the process of being profoundly transformed. Big data infrastructures, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and automated decision-making tools promise to eliminate backlogs, reduce long wait times, avoid administrative errors, and provide faster and fairer assessment of applications of those who wish to enter the Canadian borders. With the determination of 'who can get in' being increasingly assisted by automation, a spiral of rapid and profound changes has altered the relationship to immigration for immigration legal services providers and for candidates to immigration whose life course might be impacted. What are the effects of the introduction of systems that assist decision making in the analysis of immigration files on candidates to immigration?  How does the introduction of these tools affect the role of actors such as universities, employers, the migration industry?

This roundtable will discuss these questions. I will be the kick-off seminar of the IMM-AIA seminar series.  It will feature lead Canadian immigration lawyers and consultants at the forefront of these transformations as well as researchers of the Canada Research Chair in Global Migration Processes  and team members project 'The new face of migraton management in Canada: Digitalisation, Automation and AI'  funded by the Social Science Research Council of Canada.