by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

One might assume that NDG's Carol McQueen, 32 - a former Rhodes scholar and current United Nations peacekeeping official in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo - would be pretty well-versed in Canada's immigration policies.

In her three years of dealing with Africans, she has hardly heard anything that would taint her rosy notions about Canada's openness to strangers.

"Canada has a very good reputation in international circles," she says over the phone from Kinshasa. "People assume Canada has a very liberal immigration policy and that it's easy to get in."

But when her African fiancé applied for a visa to come to Canada to visit her future in-laws, McQueen realized that Canada can be a cold place.

Had McQueen been bringing somebody from one of 40-odd so-called visa-exempt countries, she wouldn't have given any thought to visa requirements.

But Africans require visas, and her husband (the two were married in January) was flat-out rejected. "The Canadian government said he didn't have sufficient economic ties to his country of origin, even though he has a full-time job there and I myself worked there," she says.

McQueen's husband Christian has been able to get a visa to Europe, has no criminal record and is gainfully employed as part of the top percentage of money earners in his country. But the two couldn't even get an interview with officials to discuss the situation - no such evaluation opportunities are offered to visa applicants.

McQueen had to marry in Africa. "My mother told me she was crying on our wedding day. She still hasn't met her son-in-law," McQueen says.

Immigration lawyer David Chalk says her situation blasts some myths. "It's a secret to most Canadians just how difficult it is to get a visitor's visa to Canada," he says. "I think a lot of immigration lawyers like myself laughed when we heard about the laxness of our immigration system. We're far more conservative in issuing visiting visas than other countries, including pre-2001 USA. Even today it's certainly not more difficult to get a visitor's visa for the States."

As a result, many would-be applicants don't even try to get the $100 visa. "Every country's visa application asks if you've been refused a visa in the past, and if you have, that makes it harder to get a visa to another country," says Chalk.

Canada Immigration media rep Cara Prest tells the Mirror that Canada issued 684,000 visitor's visas last year, which represents 81 per cent of the applications they processed.

But Chalk says far too many legitimate visitors are unjustly refused. "A Canadian visa officer in a Third World country once told me that he'd rather refuse 100 good applications than allow one person to get into Canada to make a refugee claim," he says. "That represents how far the enforcement mentality has taken hold."

McQueen is now forced to return to Canada without her husband and then wait up to two years before the pencil pushers allow her husband to join her.

"I'm psyching myself up for a major separation," she says. "I'm not looking forward to it but I'm preparing myself mentally. If I were marrying a French person or a Dutch person, they could come to Canada no problem. It's quite depressing."