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Refused over 'Canadian travel history' the applicant never had — how to rebut a wrong refusal ground

Canada • Study Permit • study 0 views
By VisaBuddies Communityvia community — compiled from public visa forums

Documents Needed

  • Full passport scan (all pages)

    The primary evidence that no Canadian travel or immigration document ever existed.

  • Justification letter

    A one-page explanation directly rebutting the erroneous refusal ground.

  • New SOP

    Members advised a rewritten SOP alongside the justification letter for the reapplication.

Step-by-Step

A second study permit refusal cited a reason tied to Canadian travel history / prior Canadian immigration documents — but the applicant's brother had never been to Canada and never held any Canadian document. Members' rebuttal playbook:

  1. Recognize the pattern. Members reported others receiving refusals referencing Canadian travel history or Canada ties around that period. When a refusal ground is factually wrong for your file, the response is documentation, not resignation.


  1. Build an evidence page. The concrete suggestion: prepare a document (uploadable via webform or with the reapplication) containing your passport details and a scan of all passport pages, with a written explanation of the passport's history — establishing there is no Canadian entry, visa, or immigration document at all.


  1. Reapply with a justification letter and a new SOP. Asked whether to seek reconsideration, the answer was to reapply '100%' — with a justification letter directly addressing the erroneous ground plus a rewritten SOP. (Reconsideration requests exist but members favored a clean, well-evidenced reapplication.)


  1. Audit your forms for the trigger. Members suspected the phantom history came from a wrong entry in the submitted forms — a mis-ticked checkbox about previous Canadian applications or documents. Triple-check every tick-box in the generic form before resubmitting; a single wrong tick can generate a refusal ground that looks inexplicable.

Dos, Don'ts & Tips

  • Do: Rebut a factually wrong refusal ground with evidence: full passport scan plus a written explanation, and a justification letter in the reapplication.
  • Do: Triple-check every checkbox in the application forms — a mis-tick about prior Canadian applications can create a phantom refusal reason.
  • Tip: Members favored a clean reapplication with justification over a reconsideration request in this situation.

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