I could open this article by quoting from one of the thousands of love songs purporting to ask or answer a question about genuine love. Instead, since this is an immigration law column, I’ll try to put it in simplified legalese. A person intending to immigrate to Canada as sponsored by a Canadian citizen or permanent resident spouse will not qualify for immigration if the underlying relationship is not genuine and was entered into primarily for the purpose of acquiring status in Canada. Simpler yet, fake marriages don’t cut it and Citizenship and Immigration Canada is on the lookout.
Under Canadian immigration laws, Canadian citizens and permanent residents may sponsor their husband or wife, common-law partner or conjugal partner. A successful and thorough sponsorship application will land your better half in Canada relatively quickly, as compared to other types of immigration applications. At the same time, a flawed incomplete application can keep genuine spouses apart for an indefinite amount of time.
Aside from the many forms, police record checks and medical testing that an applicant must endure, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has made it a priority to keep fake marriages out of Canada. These regulations have been strengthened over the years to combat the high number of fraudulent cases, also known as marriages of convenience. As a consequence of these regulations, many applications based on genuine relationships are refused, forcing the applicant and the sponsor to appeal the decision, adding up to an additional year to the application processing times, plus the stress and cost of an appeal.
When you complete an application to sponsor your spouse, make extra effort in gathering and submitting evidence to prove that your relationship is in fact “genuine”. I typically categorize evidence into two groups, “sentimental evidence” and “hard evidence”.
The primary type of sentimental evidence used is photographs. Submit a selection photographs that capture the essence of your relationship. Photos of spouses together on vacation, with each other’s close family and at major life events (birthdays, holidays, vacations, etc.) are usually well received by the government. Do not make the mistake of only submitting photos from a single visit or a single day or only photos where you are wearing the same outfit. Your photos should represent different milestones in your relationship and not just the wedding.
Other sentimental evidence to submit includes copies of birthday/holiday cards, email printouts, Facebook printouts, love letters, wedding invitations and reference letters from close friends or family that confirm the nature of your relationship. I had a client once who wanted to submit a racy video which he said confirmed beyond doubt that his relationship was real. I told him he was taking it too far.
I classify all legal and third party documents as “hard evidence”. Hard evidence that you should plan to submit include copies of a power of attorney, copies of wills or life insurance policy, naming each spouse as the other’s beneficiary, copies of a leases or land title certificates, showing both spouses as tenants or owners and copies of bank statements, showing both spouses as joint account holders.
It is also worthwhile to submit copies of boarding passes, hotel reservations, receipts for gifts and dinner and passport stamps to prove that visits between spouses actually took place. Phone bills are an excellent way to confirm communication between spouses while separated.
My final tip is to be thorough in explaining your evidence. Explain what each piece of evidence is and why you are submitting it. Handing a visa officer a pile of evidence without any explanation makes their job difficult. In submitting your application, your goal should be to make the visa officer’s job as easy as possible to approve your application as quickly as possible.
A thorough and complete application, leaving no questions to be answered may even get you out of an interview and thereby speeding up your application processing. Visa officers are empowered with the discretion to waive interviews for applications where it is clear that the relationship is genuine. As such, the extra time that you put into gathering and explaining evidence will save you much hardship and hassle down the road.
While we all know that finding and maintaining true love is a lot of work, there is no need for an immigration application to follow suit. As when searching for that special someone, when completing a sponsorship application, be honest, open, convincing and thorough.
Ryan Rosenberg is am immigration lawyer and partner with Larlee Rosenberg, Barristers & Solicitors, in Vancouver. Contact Ryan at 604-681-9887, Ryan.Rosenberg@larlee.com or visit his firm website at www.larlee.com.
Showing posts with label Sponsorship Appeals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sponsorship Appeals. Show all posts
Monday, February 08, 2010
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Winning Your Sponsorship Appeal
There are few things more disheartening then being told that your marriage is a sham – especially when it means you cannot live with your beloved in Canada.
Every year thousands of Canadian citizens and permanent residents (“PRs”) fall in love with someone from another country and those that fall hard enough will find themselves married. While some citizens and PRs will leave Canada to be with there spouse, others will embark on a bureaucratic and complicated process, mired in red tape, to sponsor their spouse’s immigration application to Canada. While many will succeed, others will fail, having their applications refused and relationships put on hold.
Spousal sponsorships can be refused for a number of reasons, including, for example, criminal records, sponsor bankruptcy, previous “issues” with Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the finding that a relationship is a fraud.
When faced with a refusal, the sponsor in Canada has the right to file an appeal at the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) of the Immigration and Refugee Board. In the first 9 months of 2007 nearly 6,000 appeals were filed at the IAD and nearly 10,000 appeals were pending, albeit, not all of them stemming from refused sponsorship applications. The IAD also reviews matters ranging from appeals of refused parental sponsorships to removal of permanent residents from Canada for reasons related to, criminality, failure to meet the PR residency requirement and failure to complete terms and conditions imposed on an entrepreneur.
Even still, this is quite the workload for the decision-makers (“Members”), as there are were 28 of them working nationally by the fall of 2007, suggesting a backlog of almost 350 decisions per Member and processing times to have an appeal heard at over one year.
When the stakes in play are the future of a relationship and the waiting times for appeals are less than forgiving, the importance of and IAD appeal is apparent. But wait, it gets better. If you have been refused at appeal and want to re-apply to sponsor your spouse, think again.
The legal principle of res judicata tells us that once a decision is made by the IAD, the IAD is bound by it, even if a sponsor re-applies to sponsor his or her spouse and that application is refused and then appealed to the IAD for a second time. There are exceptions to this principle, including special circumstances, such as fraud or misconduct giving rise to a breach of natural justice or the existence of decisive new evidence. The onus is on the sponsor to show that this very high threshold is met.
What all of this boils down to is that sponsorship appeals at the IAD are not to be taken lightly. You are best served by putting the time and effort into submitting your sponsorship application in the first place to avoid having to deal with this process. If you are refused and must appeal, be ready for a long and drawn out process that requires ongoing attention, careful preparation and expert presentation.
Every year thousands of Canadian citizens and permanent residents (“PRs”) fall in love with someone from another country and those that fall hard enough will find themselves married. While some citizens and PRs will leave Canada to be with there spouse, others will embark on a bureaucratic and complicated process, mired in red tape, to sponsor their spouse’s immigration application to Canada. While many will succeed, others will fail, having their applications refused and relationships put on hold.
Spousal sponsorships can be refused for a number of reasons, including, for example, criminal records, sponsor bankruptcy, previous “issues” with Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the finding that a relationship is a fraud.
When faced with a refusal, the sponsor in Canada has the right to file an appeal at the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) of the Immigration and Refugee Board. In the first 9 months of 2007 nearly 6,000 appeals were filed at the IAD and nearly 10,000 appeals were pending, albeit, not all of them stemming from refused sponsorship applications. The IAD also reviews matters ranging from appeals of refused parental sponsorships to removal of permanent residents from Canada for reasons related to, criminality, failure to meet the PR residency requirement and failure to complete terms and conditions imposed on an entrepreneur.
Even still, this is quite the workload for the decision-makers (“Members”), as there are were 28 of them working nationally by the fall of 2007, suggesting a backlog of almost 350 decisions per Member and processing times to have an appeal heard at over one year.
When the stakes in play are the future of a relationship and the waiting times for appeals are less than forgiving, the importance of and IAD appeal is apparent. But wait, it gets better. If you have been refused at appeal and want to re-apply to sponsor your spouse, think again.
The legal principle of res judicata tells us that once a decision is made by the IAD, the IAD is bound by it, even if a sponsor re-applies to sponsor his or her spouse and that application is refused and then appealed to the IAD for a second time. There are exceptions to this principle, including special circumstances, such as fraud or misconduct giving rise to a breach of natural justice or the existence of decisive new evidence. The onus is on the sponsor to show that this very high threshold is met.
What all of this boils down to is that sponsorship appeals at the IAD are not to be taken lightly. You are best served by putting the time and effort into submitting your sponsorship application in the first place to avoid having to deal with this process. If you are refused and must appeal, be ready for a long and drawn out process that requires ongoing attention, careful preparation and expert presentation.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Love, Relationships and Sponsorship
With Valentine’s Day on our calendar this month, how could I resist writing about love and relationships? While I’m not going to go on and on about how to find true love, I will take this opportunity to offer you some tips on how to be united with your soul-mate in Canada, if you have found love in another country.
Under Canadian immigration laws, Canadian citizens and permanent residents may sponsor their husband or wife, common-law partner or conjugal partner. A successful and thorough sponsorship application will land your better half in Canada relatively quickly, as compared to other types of immigration applications. At the same time, a flawed incomplete application can keep genuine spouses apart for an indefinite amount of time.
Aside from the many forms, police record checks and medical testing that an applicant must endure, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has made it a priority to keep fake marriages out of Canada. These regulations have been strengthened over the years to combat the high number of fraudulent cases, also known as marriages of convenience. As a consequence of these regulations, many applications based on genuine relationships are refused, forcing the applicant and the sponsor to appeal the decision, adding up to an additional year to the application processing times, plus the stress and cost of an appeal.
When you complete an application to sponsor your spouse, make extra effort in gathering and submitting evidence to prove that your relationship is in fact “true” love. I typically categorize evidence into two groups, “sentimental evidence” and “hard evidence”.
The primary type of sentimental evidence used is photographs. Submit a selection photographs that capture the essence of your relationship. Photos of spouses together on vacation, with each other’s close family and at major life events (birthdays, holidays, etc.) are usually well received by the government. Do not make the mistake of only submitting photos from a single visit or a single day. Your photos should represent different milestones in your relationship and not just the wedding.
Other sentimental evidence to submit includes copies of birthday/holiday cards, email printouts, love letters, wedding invitations and reference letters from close friends or family that confirm the nature of your relationship.
I classify all legal and third party documents as “hard evidence”. Hard evidence that you should plan to submit include copies of a power of attorney, granting each spouse power to act on the other’s behalf under prescribed circumstances, copies of wills or life insurance policy, naming each spouse as the other’s beneficiary, copy of a lease or land title certificate, showing both spouses as tenants or owners and copies of bank statements, showing both spouses as joint account holders.
It is also worthwhile to submit copies of boarding passes, hotel reservations, receipts for gifts and dinner and passport stamps to prove that visits between spouses actually took place. Phone bills are an excellent way to confirm communication between spouses while separated.
My final tip is to be thorough in explaining your evidence. Explain what each piece of evidence is and why you are submitting it. Handing a visa officer a pile of evidence without any explanation makes their job difficult. In submitting your application, your goal should be to make the visa officer’s job as easy as possible to approve your application as quickly as possible.
A thorough and complete application, leaving no questions to be answered may even get you out of an interview and thereby speeding up your application processing. Visa officers are empowered with the discretion to waive interviews for applications where it is clear that the relationship is genuine. As such, the extra time that you put into gathering and explaining evidence will save you much hardship and hassle down the road.
While we all know that finding and maintaining true love is a lot of work, there is no need for an immigration application to follow suit. As when searching for that special someone, when completing a sponsorship application, be honest, open, convincing and thorough.
Under Canadian immigration laws, Canadian citizens and permanent residents may sponsor their husband or wife, common-law partner or conjugal partner. A successful and thorough sponsorship application will land your better half in Canada relatively quickly, as compared to other types of immigration applications. At the same time, a flawed incomplete application can keep genuine spouses apart for an indefinite amount of time.
Aside from the many forms, police record checks and medical testing that an applicant must endure, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has made it a priority to keep fake marriages out of Canada. These regulations have been strengthened over the years to combat the high number of fraudulent cases, also known as marriages of convenience. As a consequence of these regulations, many applications based on genuine relationships are refused, forcing the applicant and the sponsor to appeal the decision, adding up to an additional year to the application processing times, plus the stress and cost of an appeal.
When you complete an application to sponsor your spouse, make extra effort in gathering and submitting evidence to prove that your relationship is in fact “true” love. I typically categorize evidence into two groups, “sentimental evidence” and “hard evidence”.
The primary type of sentimental evidence used is photographs. Submit a selection photographs that capture the essence of your relationship. Photos of spouses together on vacation, with each other’s close family and at major life events (birthdays, holidays, etc.) are usually well received by the government. Do not make the mistake of only submitting photos from a single visit or a single day. Your photos should represent different milestones in your relationship and not just the wedding.
Other sentimental evidence to submit includes copies of birthday/holiday cards, email printouts, love letters, wedding invitations and reference letters from close friends or family that confirm the nature of your relationship.
I classify all legal and third party documents as “hard evidence”. Hard evidence that you should plan to submit include copies of a power of attorney, granting each spouse power to act on the other’s behalf under prescribed circumstances, copies of wills or life insurance policy, naming each spouse as the other’s beneficiary, copy of a lease or land title certificate, showing both spouses as tenants or owners and copies of bank statements, showing both spouses as joint account holders.
It is also worthwhile to submit copies of boarding passes, hotel reservations, receipts for gifts and dinner and passport stamps to prove that visits between spouses actually took place. Phone bills are an excellent way to confirm communication between spouses while separated.
My final tip is to be thorough in explaining your evidence. Explain what each piece of evidence is and why you are submitting it. Handing a visa officer a pile of evidence without any explanation makes their job difficult. In submitting your application, your goal should be to make the visa officer’s job as easy as possible to approve your application as quickly as possible.
A thorough and complete application, leaving no questions to be answered may even get you out of an interview and thereby speeding up your application processing. Visa officers are empowered with the discretion to waive interviews for applications where it is clear that the relationship is genuine. As such, the extra time that you put into gathering and explaining evidence will save you much hardship and hassle down the road.
While we all know that finding and maintaining true love is a lot of work, there is no need for an immigration application to follow suit. As when searching for that special someone, when completing a sponsorship application, be honest, open, convincing and thorough.
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