Backgrounders - Marriage fraud — have your say

Background

Canadians are invited to participate in an online consultation on the issue of marriage fraud, also known as “marriages of convenience.” This national consultation questionnaire will gather input on the magnitude of the problem as well as opinions and ideas on how best to address it. Responses to the online consultation, along with messages collected from Town Hall meetings this fall and research data on the issue, will help inform future actions taken by the Department to address marriage fraud.

About this questionnaire

The Government of Canada wants to continue to reunite families while upholding the integrity of Canada’s immigration program. CIC is interested in your views about marriages of convenience, and how best to address them.

This questionnaire is meant to gather your views and ideas. It is not a tool to enforce Canadian law or to deal with individual cases. People who believe they are victims of marriage fraud should contact the police or appropriate authority. See How to report fraud for more information about appropriate authorities.

Context and definition

One of the goals of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) is to help reunite families. For this reason, Canadian citizens and permanent residents can sponsor their spouse or partner to become a Canadian permanent resident.

Part of spousal sponsorship is agreeing to financially support a spouse or partner for three years. This is a serious, legally binding commitment. If a relationship breaks down, the sponsor must still support the sponsored spouse or partner until the end of the three-year period. This means, for example, that if the sponsored partner goes on social assistance, the sponsor must repay these costs. Sponsors must accept responsibility for the people they sponsor to come to Canada.

Some people abuse spousal sponsorship by entering marriages of convenience so that they can sidestep Canada’s immigration law. Section 4 of the IRPA regulations (R4) prohibits marriages of convenience, including relationships of convenience or bad faith relationships, which are relationships that are not genuine and that were entered into primarily to obtain immigration status. In other words, it is against the law to enter a marriage only so that the sponsored partner can get into Canada.

Marriages of convenience usually take one of two forms:

• A couple pretends to be in a genuine relationship so that the sponsored partner can come to or stay in Canada. In some cases, the sponsor may be given a financial or other kind of benefit in exchange for the sponsorship.
• One of the partners enters the relationship in good faith, while the other is using the relationship only to gain permanent status in Canada. This victimizes the sponsor.

In both cases, the relationship often ends shortly after the sponsored person arrives in Canada. These relationships weaken our immigration system and make it harder for genuine immigrants to get through the system.

What Canada is doing

• Canadian visa officers check an applicant’s background, perform personal interviews and look closely at other evidence to ensure that a relationship is genuine. If an officer has good reason to believe that a spousal application involves a marriage of convenience, the officer will refuse the application. Visa officers are trained to assess relationships based on the customs, traditions and practices of other cultures.
• While there are currently no firm numbers on the extent of marriages of convenience, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) knows that, in 2009, overseas offices received about 49,500 applications for permanent residence for partners and spouses. Of these, just under 20 percent were refused. Many of these refusals were due to evidence that the marriage was one of convenience, while others were refused for reasons including criminality, security and medical issues.
• At some overseas missions with a high rate of these marriages, the Department relies more on interviews to identify fraudulent relationships. While interviews use more resources, when necessary, they prove effective to identify and deter fraudulent relationships.
• Amendments to Section 4 of the IRPA regulations should come into force this fall. They will clarify and strengthen the legislation against marriages of convenience where a relationship is not genuine or was only meant to gain immigration status in Canada. They will not affect either processing times or the time needed to assess whether a relationship is genuine.
• This website has more information about the risk of marriage fraud

What other countries are doing

Sponsorship bars

Australia, New Zealand and the United States forbid a sponsored spouse or partner from sponsoring a new spouse or partner within the following five years.

In Canada, a Canadian citizen or permanent resident who has previously sponsored a spouse or partner may not sponsor a new spouse or partner until the end of the three-year period described before. However, there is currently no similar bar on the sponsored person.

Conditional visas

In the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, permanent residence is granted to recently married spouses and partners only after a probationary period. The length of the probationary period varies between countries and individual cases, but is generally about two years. Exceptions may be made for cases of domestic violence.

This kind of conditional status does not exist in Canada. This is partly due to concerns about placing sponsored spouses and partners in vulnerable situations and whether this practice would work in the Canadian context.

Effect on resources

While the Government of Canada feels it is important to prevent marriage fraud, adopting new measures to combat marriages of convenience would demand resources—for example, to conduct more interviews at certain missions abroad, or to verify and enforce conditional visas. Also, removing people from Canada who are found to be in fraudulent relationships is costly. Resources are limited, and spending must be prioritized. Additional funds will be needed to cover any new measures or processing times may be affected. In any case, where new money and resources are needed but not available, existing resources will need to be redirected and current priorities may have to be reassessed.

Considerations

In addition to the effects on resources, there are considerations with any potential immigration measure. For instance:

• Would conditional status make a spouse more likely to stay in an abusive relationship in order to gain permanent residence?
• What if a relationship legitimately breaks down once both parties are in Canada?
• What is the appropriate role of government in identifying and protecting people from marriages of convenience?
• Should people be responsible for their own decision to sponsor a spouse or partner into Canada?