01000001 01001001 00100000 01001001 01001101 01001101: How AI Technology is impacting 3 sectors in the field of Canadian immigration
In recent months, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a hot topic, capturing the interest of most major players in the technology sector. In Canada, public agencies and private companies alike are actively exploring how to integrate this technology into their offerings. The aim of implementing this exciting new tech is that of enhancing productivity and remaining competitive in our service industries all while improving quality and accessibility to clients and beneficiaries.
In the world of immigration, this is no exception. With governments and legal practitioners increasingly considering how to turn to AI for efficiency and accuracy, one must ponder: How will AI revolutionize the immigration practice sector?
I will discuss three domains where AI is already having an impact in the immigration world, or how it is likely to do so in the coming months, days, minutes …
1. AI in Governmental Screening:
It has been speculated for a while now that the Canadian government has likely already deployed some form of AI tool to prescreen immigration applications. This move is proven by how some web forms are processed quicker than others when certain priority codes are embedded in the text of the request. Or how some work permit renewal requests quickly receive an implicit status confirmation letter. In any case, this tech represent monumental shift in processing efficiency and decision-making accuracy that can help government agents to take on increasingly higher workloads.
However, it raises significant fairness concerns as it is unclear how the data is handled and how some applicants can work the system better than others if they pull the right levers. If we do not know what AI algorithms are being deployed in the back-end, we risk perpetuating biases and errors when processing applications from low tech beneficiaries, potentially impacting the lives of thousands of applicants unfairly, or leaving some beneficiaries behind as it is not clear how the tools are processing their applications. The AI tools may even be contrary to our constitutional principles guaranteeing equal treatment and transparency in our administrative law institutions.
2. AI as helper in an Immigration Legal practice:
AI as an Assistant to Legal Professionals is another promising application. AI could help legal professional in drafting legal documents and reviewing admissibility requirements. Some technologies such as Visto.AI are already delivering tools that leverage the best from this technology for lawyer letters, and other legal documents that serve as pre-built templates that lawyers can later adjust. Such legal AI tool could help lawyers streamline the whole immigration application process.
What we have seen so far of tools like VISTO is promising and bound to be profoundly helpful to lawyers handling volume practices. Also, it is clear that automation in general will help us legal professionals complete mundane time-consuming tasks, while allowing us to focus more on the strategic and client management aspects of cases.
There is also a potential of Chat GPT like Legal Chatbots that lawyers could offer to their clients and or potential clients. This would be both a legal triage of sorts. This AI-based preliminary consultation could later be validated and elaborated upon by human lawyers, streamlining the process and reducing the workload on legal professionals. However, the effectiveness of such systems hinges on their ability to parse complex legal language and adapt to the ever-changing landscape of immigration law.
3. AI as an immigration lawyer?
This is the most interesting question of all, will AI technologies fully replace legal representatives in the immigration world? In principle, the AI language models, as they are currently being developed, show already the potential to process complex requests for information, as well as potentially outputting the necessary letters and instructions to guide applicants though immigration application processes.
Nevertheless, as biased as this statement may seem, I truly think that we are not yet ready to release AI tools to customer products so that they can self-represent and process their own immigration applications.
As much as AI promises to help beneficiaries to navigate the complex web of immigration, its ability to understand and apply nuanced legal concepts accurately to specific client cases is still not confirmed. Also, in the world of immigration, an AI consumer tool would require constant updates and retraining, especially in a field as dynamic as immigration law. Immigration policies are notoriously fluid, often changing weekly due to political shifts or new public policies. An AI system that’s not regularly updated could quickly become outdated, rendering its assistance inaccurate or even harmful for clients.
Any AI tools released to the public water supply should always have a warning that prompts clients to refer to a lawyer so they can review their application.
Regardless of the challenges, it is evident that AI has the potential to fully transform how we understand the Canadian immigration process . The balance between efficiency, fairness, and legal good practices can be achieved if new systems are responsibly surveyed and we keep in mind the ongoing need for constant retraining of AI systems to ensure the accuracy and relevancy of AI performance.
