A French citizen filed an application for immigration to Quebec but it was rejected because her thesis contained a chapter in English.
Photo: Alexandre Duval/Radio-Canada
Émilie Dubois applied for immigration to the province after completing a Ph.D. in the Francophone University of Laval in Quebec City.
At the beginning of the year, the Quebec Immigration Ministry sent Dubois a letter. It said that the native French speaker did not demonstrate the level of French proficiency required to obtain a Quebec qualification certificate (and this is the first step to obtaining permanent residence under the Quebec Experience Program).
“You did not complete a program of study in Quebec entirely in French, including the dissertation or thesis,” the letter read.
Speaking at Radio-Canada, Dubois noted that she has a diploma from a French-language university, where all her studies were in French.
One of the five chapters of her thesis on cellular and molecular biology is written in English because it is a scholarly article published in a scientific journal.
After Radio-Canada unveiled the story on Thursday, Immigration Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said the situation was absurd and asked officials to reopen the Dubois case. She was later informed that she would get a certificate of selection.