Daily Blogger - Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Posted on 04 March 2008 by Jack
Cynics Unlimited (Emilia Liz) | Marriage Immigration Fraud
Several years ago I was casually dating a man from Colombia named Carlos*. On our second date, he raised the topic of matrimony. I was a bit surprised; barely two weeks of knowing one another seemed a bit early for him to basically propose to me. Many other girls might be flattered or even elated if they received a proposal so soon in the relationship. However, while I was attracted to Carlos and was indeed considering a future with him, I suspected he might have ulterior motives for bringing up marriage on our second meeting. Carlos was in Canada on a visitor’s visa. As he explained it, there were three ways he could stay in this country: by obtaining refugee status (which he ultimately did), staying here illegally and working under the table, or marrying a Canadian. Needless to say, I did not marry him.
Though I did not become an example of it, my experience with Carlos got me interested in the subject of marriage fraud. Marriage fraud is defined as the act of marrying an individual with the sole purpose of immigrating to or obtaining permanent status in his or her country of residence and lying about the true purpose of the marriage (i.e. pretending to be in love with him or her). Marriage fraud should be distinguished from marriage of convenience, where both parties agree to get married in order to help one of them immigrate but where there is no intent to deceive the other (a la Andie MacDowell and Gerard Depardieu in the film Green Card).
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Popularity: 26% [?]
March 4th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
If you happen to know people who work in our courts of Queens Bench (I do), ask them about the number of marriage annulments they process each month. I am specifically speaking about the marriage of a Canadian female to a foreign male usually from the Caribbean and to a lesser degree South America. Once these foreign phoney ‘until death do us part’ liars and get their landed status its all too often ‘avera dache’ to the devestated heart broken bride. To make matters even worse, to my knowledge at least, there is no liason or system in place between the court and immigration authorities to expose these creeps. Even if there were, Canada’s Citizenship & Immigration has no interest in persuing these predators and tossing their useless scheming carcasses out of the country. Citizenship & Immigrations main function is not to deport people, it is to meet the monthly quota for new citizens imposed by the government. I do not suspect the government has such a quota, I KNOW they do and furthermore each Citizenship office manager’s performance evaluation is based on whether he or she meets their alloted quota. Talk about encouraging somebody to turn a blind eye in order to make the quota and enhance their career at the sametime. Nobody suffers except Canada so no big deal. Self interest first and foremost is what made this country great….isn’t it?
March 4th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Thank you for the response.
As I stated in the article, deportation might not be so feasible for these individuals (believe me there are women as well who “use” men to get into Canada; the problem goes both ways), but I don’t believe people who engage in marriage fraud should be entitled to either alimony or publicly funded service (ex. welfare) in this country. Maybe if they are denied these services they might decide Canada is perhaps not the paradise on Earth they had hoped for.
I am curious: you say your friend who works in the courts finds most of these marriage scams involve Canadian women and men from the Caribbean or Latin America. I was under the impression the problem was most widespread in the South Asian community (though I will admit to having no hard data).
It is wrong that Citizenship and Immigration takes no interest in this problem. I suspect many of these fraudsters are going to end up being a drain on Canada’s system by using welfare, medical services, etcetera. I think the kind of person who takes advantage of an individual to get what he/she wants is also willing to take advantage of the system.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I think the origin of the bulk of these ‘faux lovers’ depends on what area of Canada you live in. Vancouver is perhaps South Asian, the Prairies the Caribbean/South America, Toronto Europe and the mid-east etc.
Citizenship & Immigration’s main function is to get as many people INTO not out or the country as expediently as possible. Thus the imposing of quotas on office managers. The immigration side of the department is strictly administrative in nature, perhaps even a better description would be Canada’s international social services agency. It has no criminal enforcement function. The criminal aspect of immigration enforcement is the responsibiity of the RCMP. Co-operation, but perhaps even more so communication between Canadian immigration and other police agencies although essential in order for there to be a reasonable success rate against criminal aliens, needs considerable improvement. It took the Air India debacle to expose the shocking lack of co-operation and communication between the RCMP and CSIS. I shudder to think what it might take to get Citizenship & Immigration onto the same page as our various police agencies. Taking into consideration the dangerous threat terrorism poses to our nation, aside from the apparent urgency placed on population building, I don’t think Canada places a high enough priority on the criminal aspect regarding immigration.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I think the main difference between marriage fraud in the South Asian community and that in others is that most of that among East Indians involve spouses from the same ethnic group and often takes place as part of an arranged marriage. Maybe for that reason it’s more difficult to prosecute.
I am not sure that people who come to Canada via marriage fraud are necessarily prone to criminal behaviour; in other words they usually don’t pose a threat to Canada’s security. Still, I’m inclined to believe (as far as I know there has been no follow-up of them) they might be more likely to become a drain on Canada financially.
Have you heard of any men being deceived through marriage fraud?
March 4th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I’m sorry for bumping you off the Front Page Emilia but I’m only permitted a total of ten sub-entries. I’m looking for a way to change the number but so far “no luck”.
“I just wanted you to know that.”
March 4th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
No problem.