Canadian immigration will make greater checks to ensure marriages are genuine, and not just to enter Canada.
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13 April 2010
Canadian immigration officers to do more checks to prevent bogus marriages
Canada will crackdown on migrants who use an arranged marriage to fraudulently enter Canada.
Canadian immigration officials have admitted that the proposal will affect members of the Sikh, Muslim, Hindu and other communities who bring spouses to Canada through arranged marriages but the government has maintained the proposed measures are not designed to affect genuine applicants — only those who use arranged marriages as a way of fraudulently entering the country.
Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress told the Toronto Sun that arranged marriages that fail can lead to domestic abuse or other dangerous situations for a spouse.
“We welcome this move to enforce the policy,” Fatah said. “The Canadian citizenship is not for sale.”
Under the proposal, Canadian immigration officers will conduct more thorough background checks of applicants and will have more tools in order to protect the immigration system from bogus marriages.
Immigration lawyers in Toronto have expressed the view that there is suspicion of high abuse of the marriage process to emigrate to Canada, and this negatively affects innocent immigrants who are all suspected of fraud.
The Canadian Visa Bureau is an independent consulting company specialising in helping people lodge their Canadian Visa applications with the Canadian Embassy.
