The Spousal Sponsorship Appeal

Canadians have a right to marry (or enter into marriage-like relationships) whom they wish (subject to some basic, and common-sense, consanguinity, age, and species prohibitions). It's more straightforward when their partner is a Permanent Resident or Canadian Citizen. A Canadian, however, does not have an unfettered right to sponsor a partner that happens to be a foreign national to Canada. That decision requires the scrutiny of (sometimes overbearing immigration officers). If the sponsorship is refused, the Canadian sponsor has the right to appeal against the decision of the immigration officer to the Immigration Appeal Division. Trying to determine whether a relationship is genuine is actually more difficult than it may, at first blush, appear (one confounding variable is that there are in fact non-genuine marriages in the mix). It is true that there are many ways to skin a cat. The basic premise is the same: to separate the wheat from the chaff. However, far too often, a sponsorship appeal becomes a forensic exercise. Emotional relationships, the decision to marry do not lend themselves well to such artificial and ex post facto autopsies. The Federal Court has cautioned that too much reliance should not be "placed on minutiae and marginalities..."... Read more →