Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has released, under the Access to Information Act, a dataset that has not been analysed publicly until now: between January 2019 and 31 July 2025, 47,635 applications from Iranian nationals were referred to security screening.
Across every nationality in the world over the same period, the total was 297,080. That means roughly one in six security screening referrals in Canada involves an Iranian applicant.
The more important finding is what happened to those files: almost all of them passed.
The figures
IRCC reports permanent residence (PR) and temporary residence (TR) separately.
Permanent residence — referred to security screening:
- 2019: 2,070
- 2020: 1,125
- 2021: 1,585
- 2022: 1,875
- 2023: 3,800
- 2024: 3,855
- 2025 (Jan–Jul): 1,480
Total: 15,790
Temporary residence (VIT 34) — referred to security screening:
- 2019: 8,230
- 2020: 1,530
- 2021: 2,295
- 2022: 3,865
- 2023: 6,585
- 2024: 7,205
- 2025 (Jan–Jul): 2,135
Total: 31,845
How that compares
India sends several times more applicants to Canada than Iran does. The referral counts run the other way:
- Iran: 47,635 referrals
- India: 12,635 referrals
From a far smaller applicant pool, Iran generates close to four times India’s screening volume.
On the PR side, the next-largest sources are Afghanistan (6,865), Iraq (2,815) and Lebanon (2,495). None of them is remotely close to Iran’s 15,790.
The 2023 jump
Iranian PR referrals went from 1,875 in 2022 to 3,800 in 2023 — more than double in a single year — and stayed at that level through 2024.
The temporary residence side moved the same way: 3,865 in 2022, then 6,585 in 2023 and 7,205 in 2024.
The data does not explain the change. IRCC released referral counts, not the policy reasoning behind them. The timing is nonetheless notable.
What the screening actually concluded
The same release reports “Non-Favourable” results, which the document itself defines as failed.
For Iran:
- Permanent residence: approximately 50 non-favourable results across the full six and a half years
- Temporary residence: approximately 80
That is roughly 130 non-favourable results against 47,635 referrals — a failure rate of 0.27%.
The global average in the same dataset is 1.24% (3,670 non-favourable results out of 297,080 referrals). Iranian applicants fail security screening at roughly one-fifth the worldwide rate.
Afghanistan, by comparison, records about 215 non-favourable PR results against 6,865 referrals — near 3%, more than ten times Iran’s rate.
What this means
Put the two numbers together and the conclusion is straightforward, and contrary to what most applicants assume:
Iranians are referred to security screening more than any other nationality, and they almost always clear it.
For an Iranian applicant, a security screening referral is a routine event, not evidence of a problem with the file. The issue is not refusal. The issue is time.
Each referral means months — often years — during which the application sits in “in progress” with no letter, no explanation, and no indication of where it stands.
If your file is in security screening
- Prolonged silence is not a signal of refusal. The data points firmly the other way.
- You are not told when a referral happens. In most cases the only way to see it is a request for GCMS notes.
- Unreasonable delay is reviewable. Where a wait exceeds what is reasonable, an application for mandamus in the Federal Court exists precisely for this situation.
- Keep identity and employment history precise and internally consistent. Most long delays trace back to ambiguity in an applicant’s history rather than to a genuine security concern.
Source
Figures are drawn from IRCC records released under the Access to Information Act, pages 000127–000146, compiled by OPP-DART-2025-34337, covering 1 January 2019 to 31 July 2025.
In this dataset all values between 0 and 5 are shown as “–” and all other values are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5, so component figures may not sum exactly to the stated totals. Figures described here as approximate are approximate for that reason.
Related reading
- How often does Canadian security screening actually fail an applicant?
- What Canadian security screening actually is
- Security screening referrals peaked in 2019, not 2024
- Mandamus: when the burden shifts to the government
