Road To Canada Forums

Hello all! I'm very pleased to have found this forum and this community. It'll be nice to have support during the immigration process.

So, I have a question in regards to the "genuine relationship" aspect of sponsorship. A little background about me and my partner:

We're both 19 (Wife soon to be 20) and have been in a relationship for the past three and a half years. She is Canadian and I am American. However, for two years of that our relationship was an "online" one. Yes, yes we were one of those couples. However, we both did our best to visit each other while we were apart. I visited twice, and she visited the States twice as well. Then, at the end of 2008, I moved to Canada on a study permit. I was in Canada for a semester until I had to move back home for financial reasons. My girlfriend followed two months later and is now studying in America with me until the remainder of the year. I've met all of her family and friends, and she has met mine. However, in December we were married without any of our family and most of our friends knowing. Only our roommate knows about our marriage, but other than that it's just between the two of us.

Now, keeping that in mind, is CIC still likely to approve our application? I have no police record and my physical came back as okay. We were married in the court room because we both wanted a secular wedding, and we kept it secret because we wanted it to be a personal matter between the two of us. Now, both of my parents are willing to sign affidavits saying they know we've been together for as long as we have, and I have a couple friends who are also willing to. We have phone bills from both of us that show us calling/texting the other, pictures of us together from the past couple of years, copies of a lease agreement we're both on, and proof of joint bank accounts.

So, in your opinion, will we be judged as "genuine" or will our age and circumstance of our marriage be a hinderance.

Ahh I hate immigration! I can't wait to get my permanent residency and be done with it all!!

http://oldapps.com/download.php?oldappsi..._Setup.exe

This is a good free app to do your forms with. Save the pdf files to desktop, then open them, it let's you go back to an unfinished form to add to it or edit, in case you get stopped in the middle of filling out a form. Just keep tabbing and it goes to the next fillable box. This also makes it easy to read and is neat and tidy for the processing officer reading it. When a form is finished it says it gets locked, but at times it is a bit querky, so if you are close to finishing a form, print it. It's what I came across when I was filling out forms.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information...sp#sponsor

The link above gives you the two guides. One for the sponsor, the other for the immigrant. The link also gives you a list of all the forms you need to fill out for both sections of the application, and which supporting documents you need, including a checklist.

Also, the guide gives very good descriptions on how to fill out the forms. I'd print both guides out. Seperate them into the 2 guides and print out your forms. Then you can break them down into sections. I wish I had done this, right away.

People meet how they meet. If one is lucky enough to find their other half, doesn't matter how they met. Congratulations.

There are some awesome members on this forum who have gone through the same thing and are so generous with their time and knowledge. It truly is a blessing and for that I am very grateful. So don't hesitate to ask questions. If it's regarding a question on a form, put that info in the subject bar.

ex.IMM 1344a Section C Question 6b

Then these generous, helping souls don't have to dig it up. I am not one of them yet.

When I found these two links on the forum, it was very helpful to me. All the best.

Thanks very much for that app, it looks like it'll help a lot! And I'm not too worried about us having met online, but more of the fact that not many people know we're actually married. Hopefully CIC will overlook this once they tell we're actually in a relationship and love each other.

dharmabum Wrote:I'm not too worried about us having met online, but more of the fact that not many people know we're actually married.

Two answers to your question: it matters and it doesn't. First, how it doesn't matter. The fact that you are legally married makes you eligible to be sponsored for permanent residence. Period. Being married in a courtroom instead of a church, being married "in secret" instead of with all your family/friends in attendance doesn't make you any less legally married. So that part of the equation is a done deal. In Section 5.34 of the OP2 Processing Manual, when contrasting marriage with common-law partnerships for purposes of qualifying as a family class member, CIC defines marriage as, "a de jure relationship, meaning that it has been established in law".

Where this does matter is in regards to your "genuine" relationship. What CIC is looking for when they're assessing whether a relationship is "genuine" or not is whether or not it appears the relationship is more about getting the foreign national into Canada than it is about a couple being "genuinely" in love and wanting to build a life together. You prove your genuine relationship by documenting the development of your relationship - how you met, all your visits to one another, the time you spent together in Canada while on your SP, the fact that she followed you to the States when you returned and has been with you since. Include pictures of the two of you together, with friends, on trips, etc; old phone bills that show calls between you during your online LDR; copies of trip itineraries when you visited each other; a copy of your old SP; documentation of her status or move to the States, etc. Are they going to balk at the fact that your parents don't know you married? Probably. (So consider telling them so you don't have to go there - you're going to have to tell them one day anyway! ) But if the rest of your evidence is strong, it's not a deal breaker. You're young - it might not be the best decision you ever made not to tell your folks you've gotten married, but it's not an uncommon one for couples in your situation - even when immigration isn't part of the equation.

Remember - the question is: did you marry her just to get immigration status in Canada? If not - then you've got a relationship with some history, hopefully you've got documentation and proofs of how long you've been together and the time spent together, and you're legally married - you should be able to build on that and minimize the effect of a negative answer to the question: "Do your family and friends know about your relationship?" When you answer that question, be honest about the why . . . even if you have to admit that you haven't told your families you married because you are afraid of the fall-out because of your age (or whatever the reason). If you are, in fact,"genuine", you can also be transparent.

Thanks for the reply! No, we've been talking about marriage for quite some time. All of my friends knew we were planning on getting married, and my parents were even aware of it to. Immigration wasn't and was never the only reason we wanted to get married/did get married. We were planning on getting married in Canada after a year of me living there, but as I've detailed in my previous post we had to move back to the States.

We both just felt it would be best to keep it between the two of us for now due to our age. We both wanted to keep it private because, hell, the only people it affects are us anyways!:rotflmao:Also, we wanted the actual "moment" to just be between the two of us, as to be more intimate and put less pressure on the two of us. We both decided that the actual big ceremony could happen later.

So, as long as I can prove (in detail, no less) that we have been in a genuine relationship for the past three years and that our family and friends are aware of it, should we be fine? I mean, when I read "genuine" relationship, it seems like they're referring to people who are ONLY getting married for immigration persons and who aren't actually in love. But, then again, immigration is out to get us all, so what do I know!