Wedding bells chime to avoid deportation

Since all the proper paperwork is completed, it is difficult to identify a marriage of convenience.

A flourishing industry in Toronto is charging people up to $40,000 to arrange fraudulent weddings to ensure legal residency for immigrants.

The cash payments can be made to lawyers who make all the wedding arrangements, which include introducing a Canadian citizen to the customer, completing all application documents and arranging a wedding of convenience.

Danielle Norris, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, says the government is concerned about marriages of convenience.

"In recent years, the CIC continues to work diligently to uphold the integrity of the immigration program by ensuring that relationships of convenience are discovered and not used to circumvent the law. CIC refuses spousal applications where there is reasonable grounds to believe that the marriage is fraudulent."

That's easier said than done.

"Marriage of convenience is very hard to prove," says Esher Fiallos, a Toronto immigration lawyer who counsels clients not to defraud the system. "How would the immigration department establish that a marriage is a marriage of convenience? Marriages and even marriage breakdown are hardly unusual."

Still, the immigration department is trying very hard to clamp down on fraudulent marriages, says Norris. Some techniques include reviewing marriage documents, photographs, e-mails and love letters. Immigration officials may even make house visits.

Every year 9,000 to 10,000 Canadians marry foreigners living in the country and file inland spousal sponsorship applications, according to CIC. The department rejected about eight to 10 per cent of inland applications during the past couple of years when they felt the supporting documentation was questionable.

Planning a marriage of convenience

Normally, a person axious to stay in Canada through such a marriage needs to pay about $20,000 as a deposit to a consultant, sometimes a lawyer, and the Canadian citizen spouse will receive about half of it for going through with the fraudulent marriage. Then, the "couple" will be encouraged to open a joint bank account and get a shared mailbox.

The goal is to make these marriages appear real.

The lawyer hired by the immigrant is responsible for arranging a wedding ceremony, filing the immigration application and getting a divorce in the end. The customer needs to pay $15,000 after obtaining Permanent Residence status and another $5,000 after the divorce.

Most of those involved are foreign students and temporary workers looking to prolong their stay here. They may approach members of their community to find some Canadians for them to marry, or a lawyer that can help them arrange a marriage of convenience.

As fraudulent marriages are becoming more common in Canada, the government is employing a number of tactics to try to detect and prevent the deception.

Norris says when there is "sufficient information," CIC may start an investigation that could result in the loss of permanent resident status for the sponsored individual, adding that the department "takes all tips, complaints and reports of alleged marriage of convenience seriously."

On the other side of the fence, those who assist in carrying out the marriages say business is brisk.

One person who spoke to Capital News on the condition of anonymity says he participated in hundreds of such weddings last year, acting as a photographer. As part of the package, the photographer takes pictures of the couple in different sites, ranging from the CN Tower to a home kitchen. The couple also wears different clothes in the pictures to show that time has passed and to pretend they are in different seasons. Sometimes, fake love letters or e-mails are created to try to demonstrate to immigration officials that this is a real relationship.

If CIC suspects a marriage of convenience to help someone stay in Canada, immigration examiners will randomly interview couples to determine the validity of the marriage, asking specific questions about the details of their daily lives. In response, those involved in organizing the marriage of convenience coach the "couples" on how to answer the questions.

Further complicating the issue of the marriage of convenience is that these marriages are performed in accordance with the law and all the related documents are completed and signed legally.