Inadmissibility & Resolutions

The main grounds are criminality, serious criminality, security concerns, human or international rights violations, organized criminality, health grounds, financial reasons, misrepresentation, and non-compliance with immigration law. A family member’s inadmissibility can also make you inadmissible.

Criminality and misrepresentation account for most of the cases people actually face. Importantly, an offence is assessed by what it equates to under Canadian law, not by how it was classified where it happened, so something treated as minor abroad can still be serious for admissibility purposes.

Individual rehabilitation is an application to have IRCC declare you rehabilitated, and it can generally be made once at least five years have passed since you completed the full sentence.

Completing the sentence means all of it: custody, probation, fines and any other condition. The five years run from the last of those, which is often later than people assume. Some people are deemed rehabilitated automatically by the passage of a longer period where the offence was less serious. Rehabilitation is the permanent fix; once granted, that offence no longer makes you inadmissible.

A TRP authorizes an inadmissible person to enter or remain in Canada for a specific period, where the need to enter is justified against the risk.

It is the tool for situations where rehabilitation is not yet available, usually because five years have not passed, or where travel is needed urgently. The officer weighs your reasons for entering against the reason you are inadmissible, so a documented, concrete purpose matters. A TRP is temporary and discretionary, and it does not resolve the underlying inadmissibility.

A finding of misrepresentation normally carries a five-year bar on entering Canada and makes any application during that period essentially unwinnable.

It applies to withholding material facts as well as to false statements, and it does not require an intention to deceive: an omission an officer considers material can be enough. Because the consequence is severe and long, a procedural fairness letter raising a possible misrepresentation should be treated as the serious matter it is, and answered carefully and on time.

Read the deadline first, then respond within it with evidence that addresses the specific concern the officer raised.

A procedural fairness letter is an opportunity, not a decision. It tells you what the officer is concerned about and invites you to answer, and it is usually the last chance to influence the outcome before a refusal. The deadlines are short and firm. Responses that restate the original application without engaging the concern are the most common way this opportunity is wasted.

Sometimes. Medical inadmissibility generally arises from danger to public health or safety, or excessive demand on health or social services, and the excessive demand ground has exceptions.

Spouses, partners, dependent children, refugees and protected persons are exempt from the excessive demand ground. Where it does apply, the threshold has been raised in recent years and a mitigation plan showing how costs would be met without drawing on public services can be submitted. Cases turn on the specific condition and projected cost, so a medical assessment is the starting point.