A spate of phoney marriages taking place in India has had Canadian Immigration painting the South Asian community with a single broad brush that every single marriage is phoney.
So even genuine marriages are being looked at with suspicion, says Mendel Green of Toronto's oldest and highly-acclaimed Immigration law firm Green and Spiegel.
"The community is being impacted dramatically by some of these phoney marriages," he told rediff.com March 27.
The reception area in the downtown Toronto office tower of Green and Spiegel is teeming with South Asians -- 15-20 at a time seeking to retain the attorneys there for various immigration issues.
In the last 3 days, Green said, as many as 8 persons of Indian origin have retained him, six of them women, all in trouble due to spousal relationship having gone sour, with blame squarely put on the shoulders of Canadian spouse who in the first instance sponsored them.
"The problem is developing primarily amongst Indians who have been previously married and divorced," he pointed out.
"They have been sponsored to Canada by their first spouse, and arrived in Canada, and only stay with that spouse a short period of time. Either that spouse from India or the one from Canada goes to an immigration consultant, who tells the spouse if they have been separated for one year, they can get a quicker divorce," Green said.
"Many of these people lie about the relationship in the divorce papers and get a divorce from the spouse, they lie about the time-frame, and then they sponsor the second spouse."
In many instances, Immigration authorities have found that the divorce petitions say that the party in the first marriage separated prior to the second spouse coming to Canada. The effect of that is that immigration is proceeding with applications under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to remove the permanent residency of spouse who came from India on the basis of misrepresentation, the acclaimed immigration lawyer explained.
It is widely known that Green has open access with the immigration department. It is so as they would not take cases where they have any doubt about the genuineness of the case in the first place.
"As I received the spate of 8 cases during the last three days, I communicated with the Immigration Department and I was told there is an investigation going on into this problem into thousands."
When asked why people lie about the date of their separation, he said, "It is the Canadian spouse who is telling a lie so that he could get a quicker divorce and proceed with sponsoring another spouse from India."
That has two implications:
- Firstly, under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Immigration Department proceeds "to remove the permanent residency of the spouse who came from India on the basis of misrepresentation."
- Secondly, the second spouse from India of this Canadian spouse is not going to be able to get to Canada for many years.
He said the victim is generally a woman from India "who cannot explain logically that her marriage was bona fide, that it was not a phoney marriage, but still "she's going to be removed from here."
According to Green, he knows many, many such 'spouses' have already been removed from Canada and returned to India.
There's another dirty side to the 8 cases that Green is handling. In three cases, the women after coming to Canada found that their Canadian spouses were living with their girl friends and were unwilling to part with that relationship.
Green, of course, conceded there are two sides of every story "but the problem is becoming almost like a flue bug."
"The number of such phoney marriages is increasing and the community is being impacted dramatically," he said with dismay.
"The community must be aware that these few people who utilize the system for non-bona fide marriage are hurting the whole South Asian community because the immigration paints with the broad brush and looks at every marriage now as if it is phoney."
It is reaching a situation where the Immigration Department looks at each marriage with suspicion, said Green.
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