Date: 19971229
Docket: IMM-610-97
BETWEEN:
DOMINIC FRANK AMOAH
Applicant
- and -
MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION CANADA
Respondent
REASONS FOR ORDER
LUTFY J.:
[1] The applicant challenges, by way of judicial review, the visa officer's refusal of his application for permanent residence on the grounds that irrelevant issues were given undue emphasis in the assessment of his personal suitability to become established in Canada. He was awarded five on a maximum of ten units for personal suitability.
[2] The applicant applied for permanent residence from Japan under the assisted relative category with the designated occupation of bookkeeper.
[3] The applicant's formal education was completed at the high school level in Ghana, his country of citizenship. He last worked as a bookkeeper in 1985 in Nigeria where he lived for over three years in Nigeria. His next employment was as an assistant technician for a plastics factory in Syria for approximately thirty months. He has been in Japan since 1989 where he first worked as a storekeeper and is now employed as a forklift driver and an assistant technician.
[4] For the applicant, the visa officer ought not to have questioned why the application was not filed from Ghana or immediately after his arrival in Japan in 1989. Similarly, in the view of the applicant, the visa officer focussed unnecessarily on his legal status while he was in Syria and in Japan. The questions concerning the applicant's potential job offers in Canada, his failure to travel to Canada previously and his use of counsel to assist him with the application ought not to have been raised by the visa officer. The applicant also argues that the visa officer did not place sufficient emphasis on the applicant's successful adaptability to foreign countries and his accumulated savings of approximately $70,000 in assessing his personal suitability to become successfully established in Canada. Finally, the applicant states that it was wrong for the visa officer to note that the average score he awarded for personal suitability was within the range of five to seven units.
[5] I disagree with the applicant's submissions. The material before me discloses no reviewable error. Even if the visa officer may have raised one or two issues not directly related to personal suitability, it was open to him to award five units on the basis of all the information made available by the applicant. This application for judicial review has fallen far short of meeting the threshold required to establish a reviewable error.
[6] The application for judicial review is dismissed. Neither party suggested the certification of a question.
Judge
Ottawa, Ontario
December 29, 1997
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