I'll share first.
I'm a Chinese national. I spent both my undergraduate and graduate years in the US. I worked for 2 years for an American institution on matters concerning AI and biomedical drug discovery, and then 1 year at a Chinese no-name startup. I received AOR on 01/16/2023 via the FSW route, and screening began on 05/10/2023 according to CBSA and CSIS notes.
Historically, people of my background were very rarely sent to screening. IIRC starting 2017, applicants educated by certain Chinese schools with links to the military were sent to SS en masse. But it did not take until late 2022 for most Chinese applicants with a STEM background to be sent to screening.
I made this post to assess if my hunch about recent changes are roughly correct: MENA applicants (especially Iranian) are still being sent to SS at a high rate, while SS rates for Chinese applicants have recently exponentially exploded. If so, then backlogs at CSIS and CBSA are going to increase, making mandamus more worthwhile. Historically, mandamus for applicants under SS have mixed results, because CSIS is apparently exempt from being put on the defendant's bench; one had to rely on IRCC to pressure them into action.
I'm a Chinese national. I spent both my undergraduate and graduate years in the US. I worked for 2 years for an American institution on matters concerning AI and biomedical drug discovery, and then 1 year at a Chinese no-name startup. I received AOR on 01/16/2023 via the FSW route, and screening began on 05/10/2023 according to CBSA and CSIS notes.
Historically, people of my background were very rarely sent to screening. IIRC starting 2017, applicants educated by certain Chinese schools with links to the military were sent to SS en masse. But it did not take until late 2022 for most Chinese applicants with a STEM background to be sent to screening.
I made this post to assess if my hunch about recent changes are roughly correct: MENA applicants (especially Iranian) are still being sent to SS at a high rate, while SS rates for Chinese applicants have recently exponentially exploded. If so, then backlogs at CSIS and CBSA are going to increase, making mandamus more worthwhile. Historically, mandamus for applicants under SS have mixed results, because CSIS is apparently exempt from being put on the defendant's bench; one had to rely on IRCC to pressure them into action.
