Prove your love

Under the same chestnut trees, where three years ago she had mused with me her expectation of Johnny finally joining her here in Vancouver, Daisy, pushing a stroller, and I, on the same side of the sidewalk on Cartier Street, met from opposite sides—she, in glee waving her hand, “Ate!” The baby, already her second since, my first time to learn of it, gurgled. 

Daisy wore the same lit-up face that had sparked as a breeze brushed the dappled shade that afternoon, but telling me this time, the baby’s name. More like a fulfilled woman, or she would want to add, “lucky lang po, siguro,” recalling how her answers and supporting documents in her petition for Johnny, under Canada’s Spousal Sponsorship program, passed sans the quite common glitches.

The waiting had taken two years, like forever, she said then—though the same could be said of their romance: She had gone home to marry a relative of her sister’s in-laws whom she met one winter on a break from her job at McDonald’s.

At that town fiesta in a friend’s house, they had reached for the last stick of inihaw na baboy at the same time, brushing arms; she smiled. And they laughed, a bright omen, which had guided their next incidental meetings, their wedding, their vows, the emails and costly overseas calls.

How couldn’t all that, be foolproof? Still, familiar with denial cases (though open to appeal), fears assailed Daisy during the wait. Apparently, the most concrete evidence of love fulfilled, a marriage certificate, could prove often wanting.

While a six-page application form for both the sponsor and sponsored seems straightforward with basic questions on family, education, and employment background, and on to facts about the marriage, like the wedding and even the honeymoon, it soon poses rather nosey questions for the sponsored on who would benefit with a permanent residency status as soon as he or she arrives in Canada.

Loopholes and discrepancies in bogus transactions—and it’s common knowledge that there had been attempts—somehow could rise, slinking like smoke. In such cases, the process could continue with unannounced visits and more interviews, as in one that I read at thestar.com, where telling details popped up like the “wife” not knowing where to find a pair of her “husband’s” socks or the toothbrush she claimed they use as one; in another case, the sticky fly came up in differing addresses in their driver’s licenses.

In the end, intimacy that holds marriage together, possibly faked in facts and oral responses, turns out not easy to veil within four walls. Such apparent poking, actually tell if a relationship has been “developed,” “current,” and most of all, “genuine.” If really true, couples could appeal a denial.

The most number of appeals, according to a chart from the Canadian Immigration Appeals Division and Refugee Board spiked in 2007, at 3527 reconsidered and 1379 approved. Down in 2012, at 1793 with 561 allowed, such figures still hinted at abuse of Canada’s immigration system.

Hence, along with an earlier “bar of five years to sponsor another spouse,” a stiffer rule with exceptions, announced in October 2012, grants only conditional permanent residence status to the sponsored partner pending a two-year cohabitation with the sponsor; if found genuine, the conditional status is lifted, and if otherwise, revoked.

Yet, besides such seeming deterrents in immigration rules, among the few couples I knew that had started off undeterred, love has proven to be the mystery that it is. Leni’s husband, for example, slinked away shortly after nestling. Joanne’s dad turned out to be an abuser, who her mom reported to immigration and deported before she was born.

Worst, Hilda’s husband amid waiting had maniacally turned to every teenage-girl, including relatives, smashing her wife’s dreams of reunification. But seeing in Daisy the glow in love tested and found true, my faith, once more, has been fortified.