A pal of mine's applying to immigrate to Canada. Not just the usual huffing, mind you: We're talking about actually jumping through the hoops here. And boy howdy, there are plenty of them. As an American expat proud to call Maritime Canuckistan home, I can totally vouch for that. Frankly, I suspect that at least some of the paperwork is there just to see how badly you really want it.
For instance...
How long would it take you to generate a list of all your previous addresses since the age of 18? I was lucky; I'm a pack-rat and I have friends who are pack-rats. For everything else, there was a vague recollection and Google Street View. I'm even not kidding.
Do you know where your birth certificate is right now? How about your marriage license (and/or divorce papers)? College transcripts? High school transcripts (again, not kidding)? Don't have some of them? Better send away for copies. (Cha-CHING!) Then have those copies copied (in colour). Eh, might as well have 'em notarised while you're at it so they look all official 'n such.
Hey, U.S. residents: Did'ja file away those annual earnings statements from the Social Security Administration so you can back up your claims about employment history (which I certainly hope you can just snag off your resume, btw.) If you tossed them, womp-womp: The SSI folks do not supply replacements at any price.
Speaking of employment history, if you immigrate as a Skilled Worker, you might be called upon to prove that you have enough years of experience in specific job types (National Occupation Codes, a.k.a. NOCs; best familiarise yourself with them--and hope they don't change before you submit your app.--because they are make-or-break).
How do you "prove" your work history? The preferred format is letters of reference from your current and/or previous employers. On company letterhead. Stating your position, your tenure, your responsibilities, and your pay. Let's get one thing straight: Your previous employers have ZERO interest in complying with that. Oh, did one or more of them close? Maybe bought out by another company? That sucks. Also? You probably want to work up an explanation for your current employer if you need their help in documenting your work history. I was extremely lucky that my employer was willing to let me work remotely as a contractor.
Criminal background checks (which in the U.S. is done by having your fingerprints taken by the local constabulary and sending them to the FBI for cross-checking) have a shelf-life. With a non-trivial processing-time (of course). So there's some timing you have to do with your actual application. And if, for some reason, there's a problem with your application, you might have to do it again.
You of course have a current passport, right? No? Uh-oh: Better make an appointment to have your photos taken and take them and your birth certificate and your photo ID and head down to the Post Office to set that in motion. You usually have to make an appointment for that too, by the bye. During regular business hours: Whee!
And, assuming you make it through the first rounds of vetting, you'll be expected to take a medical exam which is only offered at a limited number of offices and correspondingly spendy. Blood draw, uninalysis, chest X-ray, the whole shootin' match. Oh, and you have a rather limited time in which to do it. (Our consultant dropped the ball on our file and we had ten days to scramble that together.)
I could dig up my notes for fuller detail, but that's what sticks in my memory just now. There's more--trust me.
Bottom line: You'll bleed toner ink and money and time off from work and even a little bit of real blood before they punch your ticket. If they punch your ticket.
What with all the obstacles and requirements and a few time constraints, it hit me: Why not gamify it? Heck, it's kind of already gamified. I mean, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada already calculates eligibility on a points-based system. And some immigration programs are run as a lottery anyway, which means you're rolling the bones. So it's almost like CIC is asking for it, amirite?
Now. Apart from being eligible in the first place, the most challenging part, by far, is the paperwork-gathering mentioned above. Because it sometimes walks the line between weeding out the posers and bureaucratic sadism. (I mean, seriously, the all-addresses-since-the-age-of-eighteen thing? Just....whyyyyyyy does that even matter?????)
But, wait! People will go to limb-and-life-risking lengths to collect completely imaginary stuff in, say, Pokémon Go. So why not real stuff?
When I pointed that out to the afore-mentioned friend, their response was basically, "OMG--if I spent as much time on that as I have on Pokémon Go, I'd be in Canada already!"
And that's when the light bulb went on. And, after roughly thirty seconds of scoping out the DB structure, back-end infrastructure, and riffling my memory for the names of the iOS/Swift developers I know, I pulled the plug on that light.
As it should be.
Because the reality is that I've already put serious thought into a checklist version of this sort of application. To the point of picking the brains of a (willing) immigration consultant. And the central issue is that keeping up with the myriad of requirements for dozens of immigration programs (e.g. Skilled Worker, Family Sponsorship, Provincial Sponsorship, Entrepreneur class, etc.) is pretty much a full-time job. Which doesn't work for a part-time pro-bono project.
Also because, as (to quote Mark Andreeson) software continues to eat the world, making a difference means resisting the urge to fix what's not really broken. If you want to become an immigration consultant in Canada, the barrier's already fairly low. About $8K plus your time for the course-work. Silicon Valley-style "disruption" only makes sense when markets are un-/under-tapped. And the number of cases the Government of Canada can and wants to handle is a fixed number. In fact, there's a backlog (hence, the lotteries).
The case could be made that turning the Permanent Resident application process into Pokémon Go might improve the overall quality of applications (see "weeding out the posers" above). I didn't say it was a good case: Ain't no AI out there gonna tell you whether, say, a birth certificate looks cromulent. At best, it makes people more organised before they submit their PR application. Frankly, I'm not holding my breath for until that happens.
Worse, though: What happens if the "game" goes viral? And the tsunami of applications hits the CIC's processing centers. I mean, we already saw their website crash in the wake of a single election last autumn. (Shudder.)
Worst, the furor will eventually die back. Then they'll track me down and kick me out of the country. And, frankly, I couldn't find it in my heart to blame them when they do.
