Immigration Marriage Fraud in Canada Research Paper

Immigration Marriage Fraud in Canada - Research Paper Example Under the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, one of the major objectives is to assist families to reunite. It therefore follows that, permanent residents and Canadian citizens may undertake to sponsor their partners or spouse to enable then obtain permanent residence in Canada (Ward and Belanger 2010). However, this Act has been continuously abused by some individuals who enter into marriage for convenience to defeat the Canadian immigration laws and gain permanent resident in Canada. Fraudulent marriage may take two forms: One, spouse may pretend to be in a relationship that is genuine so that it can be easy for the partner who is being sponsored to gain entry into Canada while on the other hand the sponsoring partner may be given some kind of benefits either financial or other kind in return for the sponsorship. The second kind of fraudulent marriage or marriage of convenience is where one of the spouses genuinely gets into a relationship not knowing that his or her partner only wants to use the relationship to get Canadian permanent resident status (Magana 2003). Under the two instances of marriage of convenience, the relationship is terminated soon after the person who is sponsored gain permanent resident status in Canada, thus marriage of convenience or fraudulent marriages weakens the Canadian immigration system not to mention the difficulty that such fraudulent marriage present especially to the immigrants who are genuine in their endeavors. A case in mind is the recent incident where a young Indian boy committed suicide after his wife married him in India, immigrated to Canada, and walked out on him once she became a Permanent Resident. Gurdip Singh Saroya an Indian man had married his wife Harmanjit Kaur Dhami who arrived in Canada on October 12 to reunite with her husband, on arrival; however, she would not allow her husband to touch her. She insisted that she wanted to go and stay in Toronto on her own. Unable to come into terms with this news Gurdip Singh Saroya her husband could not swallow this emotional fraud from his wife anymore, on one Monday morning, Gurdip Singh Saroya committed suicide by jumping off the Pattullo Bridge. The family of Gurdip Singh Saroya is convinced that the actions of Harmanjit Kaur Dhami the fraud wife as they call her was to blame for their sons’ death. They have a strong conviction that Harmanjit Kaur Dhami persistence to move to Toronto to stay alone severely affected Gurdip Si ngh Saroya as he realized that he was in a marriage that was strange and unworkable. The family of Gurdip Singh Saroya are also convinced that Harmanjit Kaur Dhami only used her marriage to their son for convenience purposes to gain permanent resident to Canada. In Canada, an individual commits a marriage fraud when he or she enters into marriage for purposes of getting the requisites to attain permanent resident in Canada. For this reason, when a foreign spouse is helped to gain entry into the country and within a short time walks out of the marriage, these spouses automatically subscribes to their community support system which constitutes a marriage fraud. Basically, the institution of marriage is a union that is sacred, and in instances where one of the party to the marriage has genuine feelings and intentions while the other party mostly the party who is sponsored to get entry into Canada, has a deceptive intention of gaining permanent entry into the country, the very core valu es of marriage are defeated and as such that marriage never existed in the first place. The veil behind immigrants’ marriage must therefore be lifted to establish the true intentions of the parties intending