Marriages Of Convenience Still Exist In Canada

CIC is still in front of incidents of marriages of convenience even though the Canada immigration minister had been present at town hall events in a bid to know the experiences faced by Canadians in this view.

In 2007, Canada immigration department primarily came to know of the marriages of convenience or paper marriages in Canada through the complainants who had compensated for migrants to assist them come to Canada and married them. On the other hand, once such foreign nationals were in Canada, they instantaneously withdraw the marriages.

CIC had newly initiated an online survey concerning marriages of convenience / fake marriages / paper marriages in Canada and Jason Kenney, the Canada immigration minister had been present at town halls in Montreal and Vancouver for expressive experiences of Canadians.

It was then that the CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) called for a search into the rising number of such deception cases connected to marriages of convenience in Punjab (India), as said by the documents found under the Access to Information Act.

As indicated by the findings of the investigation, more than a few cases of marriages of convenience were connected to human smuggling, misuse and drugs trafficking.

The problems recognized during the study made it trickier to investigate primarily because of lack of constancy between offices and regions and besides because of varied understanding of regulations from one region to another and from one official to other.

In December 2007, a small number of solutions to such problems were given in a memo dated December 2007 which are affirmed below—

• Need for additional training for investigators of the Canada immigration department;

• Creation of devoted positions for analytical and proactive activities to control fraud;

• Providing power to employees of CIC for conducting field investigations;

• Finding the group of people practicing arranged marriages.

The memo states that it’s high time that suitable efforts are initiated by Canada immigration department. But, it’s almost three years since such steps were counsel but it still remains uncertain as to which steps were worked out by the CIC to control marriages of convenience in Canada in spite of reiterations by the Canada immigration minister Jason Kenney to weed out this problem from Canada.