Thou Shalt Not Marry A Foreigner

Thou Shalt Not Marry A Foreigner

By Damaris Garzon

Copyright 2014 Damaris Garzon

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Table of Contents

About this book

Chapter 1 - Stigma: Thou shalt not fall in love with a foreigner

Chapter 2 - Marriage of convenience: Guilty until proven otherwise

Chapter 3 - No work permit for you!

Chapter 4 - An opaque kind of transparency

Chapter 5 - Consistent inconsistency

Chapter 6 - Shut up and listen: A helpful call centre

Chapter 7 - Now you see it, now you don’t: The strange case of the ECAS button

Chapter 8 - Stay with this guy or we’ll deport you: A wider look at the state machine

Chapter 9 - Every action causes a reaction: The consequences

Appendix

About this book

What is this book about? To put it simply, it is about a group of Canadian citizens who are being put through significant financial hardship and emotional distress for having entered into a relationship with a foreigner. Is the non-Canadian partner causing all the affliction? Not really. The responsible is Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the federal government agency that oversees all immigration matters. In short, this book is about discriminatory action.

In this book I have documented the voices of Canadian citizens who feel they are being penalised for having made a personal choice that is no one's business but their own. More importantly, I have also documented the silence of government officers, which is just as significant. I suggest that you read this book paying attention both to what is said and to what it is not said. Think about who is present and who is absent, and think about why.

Some will say that Canada is not the only country taking this approach and that I am just magnifying the importance of this issue. Let me tell you something: this book is not a treaty in comparative immigration policy. I have made reference to the policies enforced by other countries where appropriate in order to prove a point, but it is not within the scope of this book to provide a comparative analysis of global immigration policy. There is only one benchmark here, and that benchmark is the one that Canada itself has created. Canada may not be the only country taking a discriminatory approach to immigration policy. Other countries do so too. But other countries do not purport to be welcoming and multicultural to the extent that Canada does. We all know that immigration is a thorny issue. Some countries have put on a global advertising campaign claiming that they excel at handling immigration. Other countries know better and just let it be. My point is that Canada has set its own standards, has failed to meet them, and now refuses to acknowledge it. If you think that Canada is no worse than other countries when it comes to immigration policy, the official discourse has worked its magic on you.

Initially, I planned to write an academic text packed with qualitative analysis, coding, sociological theory, a literature review justifying my rationale, and what not. This is what I have been trained to do and I do it well, but social research does not appeal to the general public, particularly when it deals with contentious topics like immigration. I therefore decided to take a different approach.

However, I must stress that while I have adapted my writing style to suit the average man and woman on the street, the methods used to collect data are still of an academic nature. I started collating evidence in March 2014. I had a hypothesis, which can be summed up in plain English as something is wrong. I wanted to know the specific ways in which wrongness is enacted, and I wanted to know what this means not only for the people involved, but for Canadian society at large. This is an ambitious objective and I fully acknowledge that my mission is not complete.

As for the research methods used, these include interviews, email exchanges, and short questionnaires delivered through electronic means. A significant amount of data was collected from online forums and social network groups. How reliable is this information? Much more reliable than one would expect, as in the majority of cases people feel much more inclined to tell their full stories while sitting behind a computer screen and using a nickname. In this respect, I want to mention that names and other identifying details have been changed at the request of participants, and this is important in its own right. Something is very wrong when people fear that they might be somehow penalized for divulging the hardships they are going through as a result of official policy. Then again, this fear may be unfounded, but the important thing is that the apprehension exists.

I have to expect that my objectivity will be called into question. It would be extremely difficult to remain neutral in the light of certain facts, and I believe that doing so would also be unethical. You can only be for or against discrimination. There is no middle ground. The deeper I dug, the more shocked I was by what I found. Let me make this clear: I have zero interest in giving readers the official party line or in glossing over the real issues. Doing this would discount the suffering of Canadian sponsors and their families, and their hardships must not be passed over. If you want to read the official party line, you only need to read the media. Journalists have to abide by editorial lines; I do not. Editors often receive orders from above that dictate their publication guidelines; I do not receive orders from anyone. I do not write bland statements to appease my superiors, because I don't have any. I have the luxury of freedom and I count on the privilege of having insider information. That makes all the difference. I do not care about what Canada Immigration and Citizenship says; I care about what it does. In the end, there is only one thing I can say: you will recognise them by their fruits. Canada Immigration and Citizenship is not only wronging Canadian individuals and their families. The whole department is an embarrassment to the country.

I also want to clarify that I am not launching a personal attack on individual Canadians whenever I use the word 'Canada' in this book. I have met immensely friendly Canadians and I have met obnoxiously racist Canadians, just like I have met friendly South Africans and racist South Africans; friendly Mexicans and racist Mexicans; friendly Germans and racist Germans. Canada is no different and I am well aware of it. This book is not about Canadians' attitude to immigration. I will say it again: this is an attack on a specific government agency. Some will be offended all the same, but frankly, that is not my problem.

Last but not least, I want to thank those who have contributed to the write up with their experiences, and I hope that their ordeals are over very soon.

So, what is this book about? It's light sociology. It's a frontal attack on Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It's a comprehensive overview of everything that is wrong with the spousal sponsorship programme.

WARNING:

NOT to be read by those who do not have a sense of humour

NOT to be read by those who do not appreciate sarcasm

NOT to be read by wannabe diplomats

Without consideration, without pity, without shame,

they built around me great and towering walls.

And now I am sitting and despairing here.

I think of nothing else: this fate is gnawing at my mind;

for I had many things to do out there.

When they were building the walls, how could I not be aware?

Yet never did I hear the clatter of builders, or any sound.

Imperceptibly, the shut me off from the world outside.

Walls, Constantine Cavafy, 1897

Chapter 1

Stigma: Thou shalt not fall in love with a foreigner

In 1963, US sociologist Erving Goffman wrote a book entitled Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. The book is a fascinating and highly readable account of what it feels like to be branded an outsider for not fitting the mold. Goffman was not your average academic: he wrote in plain English and his work was eminently practical. Stigma draws on the first-hand experiences of outliers and presents comprehensive case studies that help us understand what it means to be different.

According to Goffman, stigma is enacted in three different ways. Some people will be stigmatised because their physical appearance does not conform to the norm. Others will be stigmatised because their personalities do not fit. But it is the third type of stigma the one that concerns us here. It is what Goffman called tribal or group stigma that is particularly relevant to this book. How so?

Despite claiming to boast a long history of acceptance and despite preaching the virtues of multiculturalism, something smells fishy at the Canadian executive. The central theme of this book relates to the stigma that is enacted on foreign marriages and relationships. Canadians who choose to enter into a sentimental relationship with a non-Canadian deviate from the norm. They do not marry within their in-group, which means that they are out, that they become in-betweeners, borderline citizens who deserve to be chastised, outsiders who have surrendered some of their basic rights by virtue of being love with a foreigner. They are a discredit to certain sectors of society. Just like Goffman's research subjects, Canadians who fall in love with a foreigner and who want to live with their partners in Canada straddle the line between the discredited and the discreditable. They are expected to accept that lower standards of life will apply to them and their families. Through the implementation of official policy and with the blessing of bigots and uneducated individuals, they become second-class Canadians. In doing so, government bodies like Canada Citizenship and Immigration are micro-managing social identities, creating a hidden social hierarchy that consists of good Canadians (those who do not disturb the social order) and not-so-good Canadians (those who infringe non-spoken rules by bringing in a foreign element into their lives).

Am I making all this up? Read this book and judge by yourself. As it happens with most studies that are of a sociological nature, the results are open to interpretation. Is it fair to say that the Canadian government discriminates and stigmatises en masse? Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Instead, the question should be is it fair that thousands of Canadians and their families feel that they are being wronged by their own government and left out? At the time of writing, there were 10,000 spousal sponsorship applications being processed by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I did not interview every single one of those 10,000 families (mostly due to lack of funds), but I need to comment on two issues in this respect:

a) I very much doubt that any Canadian citizen going through the process described in this book is content