The Other Side of the "Sham" Marriage

The BBC has posted a great article about the burgeoning "wedding detective" trade in India, where there are apparently around 15,000 businesses willing to investigate a potential bride or groom. Most of the time these folks will be hired by the bride's family to investigate the groom and authenticate family status, verify income and capital assets, check for other wives or a history of infidelity, and verify sexual orientation. Says the BBC:

"The vast majority of enquiries come from parents who want to assess the 'character' of their future son-in-law ...
"The nature and scope of investigation depends on the moral or cultural values of parents. Someone from a more traditional Indian family might want to check up on whether a bride or groom drinks or smokes.

"Others might be keener to learn whether there are any past relationships, something which can still be frowned upon in India. Conducting a review of a groom's financial dealings and business assets is also common."

Because it is still fairly common for the bride to move in with her in-laws after marriage investigations can sometimes address the character of the potential mother in law:

"'We study the mother-in-law,' says [one detective]. 'How many times does she get angry, how many times does she throws the vessels out, how many times does she go shopping, what does she spend her money on. We understand everything about her and then put it in writing.'"

If only I'd known. Apparently, these investigations can become extraordinarily elaborate, involving "spy cameras hidden in watches, key chains, lockets and shirt buttons," complicated ruses and creative disguises:

"It is normal practice for [another detective] to wear disguises. He dresses as beggars, watchmen and drivers to gain access to a subject's house and life. There is no limit to what persona he might take on. [The detective] once posed as a pimp, after the parents asked for a 'honey trap' test."

Now, detectives are also hired in matrimonial matters in Canada, however here it's usually on an after-the-fact basis... or so I thought. For example, the oddly-named Deception Investigations claims to specialize in "domestic and matrimonial issues" and will surreptitiously investigate your beloved to determine whether he or she is having an affair, hiding assets and so forth, and also offers to chase people down who are in arrears of support. Much the same services are offered by Shadow Investigations and Advanced Surveillance Group.

However, reading Deception's website more closely reveals that they also offer "pre-marital screening." Another company, Surrey Private Investigator, offers the same sort of service under the curious heading "Relationship Investigations:"

"Does your lover have a secret past? Before you become involved with a person, you may decide to conduct a pre-relationship investigation for the purpose of looking into the background of the person with whom you share romantic interests or plan to marry. Isn't it important that you know if they are really who they say they are."

The website of Pinnacle Investigations is much more detailed about the services they offer:

"... A thorough back check is the key to making the right decisions when entering into new relationships where even the slightest suspicions are encountered. ... We conduct property searches, bankruptcy and judgment searches, lien searches, lifestyle checks and mystery shopping. ..."

Now, I can guess what "lifestyle check" is code for, but "mystery shopping" baffles me unless your fiancé or fiancée is a prostitute. Interestingly, Golden West Investigative Group takes a less literate, darker perspective on pre-marital inquiries, and seems to adopt the groom's perspective:

"When entering a partnership relationship (proposed marriage), there are times that one of the parties may be coming into the new marriage with considerably more assets than the other. It is becoming more common to have pre-nuptial agreements in such cases. It is also becoming more common for the party with the greater asset base to hire a firm like Golden West Investigative Group Ltd to conduct a thorough investigation and surveillance to make sure that everything is on the up and up before the marriage occurs. This may sound like a lack of trust but some people have enough assets to be an EASY MARK for a few unscrupulous people. It is sad... but so true in today's world of wealthy entrepreneurs. If you are entering a new relationship, be sure you know who your other future half really is."

It seems that the cultural background which makes the BBC story so charming isn't so far off from the values of the cynical but engaged in British Columbia!

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Federal Government Cracking Down on Sham Marriages

The Globe & Mail today reports that Citizenship and Immigration Canada is working on a plan to reduce the number of marriages entered into for immigration purposes; the Globe article specifically mentions India and China as target countries where fraudulent marriage schemes are common. According to the Globe, regulations to be published later this year will allow Citizenship and Immigration to issue "a new 'conditional' immigration status," which I assume would be a conditional sponsorship approval, and limit sponsoring spouses to one new spouse every five years.

Marriage fraud has been on Citizenship and Immigration's radar for a number of years. Here's an extract from a speech delivered by immigration minister Jason Kenney at a golf club in India on 9 September 2010:

"We aim to reunite our citizens and permanent residents with family members and we recognize that most individuals who apply for family reunification are in genuine relationships.
"But we also aim to protect the integrity of our immigration system and uphold our laws by identifying and addressing fraudulent activity. This includes ensuring that fraudulent marriages are discovered and not used to circumvent our laws.
"Accordingly, if we find evidence during the sponsorship process that individuals are committing marriage fraud, we can and will refuse the application for permanent residence.
"Our officials at missions here and around the world are trained to assess relationships based on customs, traditions and practices of the specific cultures in which they work.
"I can assure you that the Government of Canada is working to limit abuse and fraud, and we will not be limiting immigration to Canada or the protection Canada provides to refugees."

Concerns like these led the ministry to undertake a series of public consultations later that year, the results of which have been published on Citizenship and Immigration's website and include recommendations for a conditional immigration status and limiting the frequency with which new spouses can be sponsored. Here is the summary conclusion drawn from the consultations, with emphasis added:

"In sum, those who participated in the consultation acknowledged concern about marriages of convenience. Most considered the issue to be a threat to the integrity of Canada’s immigration system, and the majority expressed a need for greater public education and awareness. A strong majority felt that the sponsor should bear considerable personal responsibility for ensuring that they were entering into a genuine relationship.
"Of the suggested measures proposed to address marriages of convenience, the leading option was for punishment of individuals found to be committing fraud (i.e. deportation, fines, legal action). Respondents also strongly supported increased investigative or screening measures, while just over half indicated that they were not prepared to tradeoff [sic] longer processing times for more investigations into potential cases of fraud. There was broad support for both the introduction of a sponsorship bar and for a conditional measure. For a conditional measure, the appropriate length suggested by most was for two years or less, followed by moderate support for a period of three to five years."

I have no doubt that marriage fraud is a problem for the federal government inasmuch as it undermines the coherence and public policy objectives of the immigration system. It's also a serious problem when the sponsoring spouse is unaware that the marriage was undertaken for ulterior purposes — the discovery of the other spouse's motives can cause no small amount of financial and emotional harm; see the 2006 case of Raju v. Kumar as an example of the harm which can be wrought.

Update: 1 November 2011

CBC has published an article on the enforcement side of this issue, and reports that through "Project Honeymoon" the Canada Border Services Agency has opened 39 investigations into suspected cases of marriage fraud since 2008, resulting in seven charges and three (count 'em, three) convictions.
Could it be that the rate of marriage fraud simply isn't as high as the immigration minister suggests? Or is it simply a problem of needing sufficient staff to address an problem which is inherently difficult to investigate? According to the CBC:

"... the internal border agency documents — disclosed under the Access to Information Act — acknowledge the cases require considerable resources, and many never make it to court."

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CBC Reports Continuing Government Concern with Fraudulent Marriages: Sham, wow.

CBC has published a story on the federal government's recent interest in "cracking down" on marriages of convenience, marriages entered into for immigration purposes rather than conjugal. Although Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been aware of the issue for quite some time, the ministry has recently launched an online survey on the subject and the minister, Jason Kenney, has held public meetings in Montreal and Vancouver to collect opinions.

It's difficult to pick out exactly what the government's concerns are, although the CBC's summary of a 2007 CIC report uncovered by intrepid journalist David McKie says that:

"The investigation produced shocking revelations about the number and nature of the marriages, including ties to the sex trade, narcotics trafficking, embezzlement and human smuggling."

The more pressing problem, I think, is the emotional toll taken when the immigrating spouse finally arrives in Canada, after years of arguing with the CIC to obtain permanent resident status, only for the sponsoring spouse to discover that their marriage is a sham. As an earlier CBC story put it:

"The most common type of fraud occurs after Canadians sponsor foreign spouses to live with them. After being granted permanent residence, the new arrival lands in Canada and abandons the sponsor."

Assuming that the government's concern is to prevent this sort of mischief, the next question to address must involve the means available to government to combat marriage fraud while respecting the traditions of arranged marriage common to many cultures. How do you winnow out arranged marriages entered into in good faith from those entered into for immigration purposes alone?

Apart from (1) delaying citizenship status by two or three years from the date of immigration or the commencement of the spouses' cohabitation and (2) more strictly evaluating the formal validity of marriages, I really don't know what can be done about this difficult problem from a regulatory standpoint. (Aggrieved spouses can seek some relief through the courts, with occasional success as demonstrated by the 2006 case Raju v. Kumar, but this is a time-consuming and costly process with no guarantee of success.) I would be hesitant to resolve the problem by entirely shifting the burden to the sponsoring spouse on a sort of caveat emptor basis, but with the attention this problem has begun to receive I trust that potential sponsors will be more skeptical of the marriage proposals they receive.

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CBC Reports on Fraudulent Marriage

CBC has reported today on the case of a Victoria woman who says that her husband duped her into marrying him just so he could immigrate to Canada. Although people enter into sham marriages all the time, it is always tragic when the sham is known only to one of the spouses.

When an innocent spouse has suffered real harm as a result of the deception, however, the court is usually happy to try to redress those wrongs. In the case of Raju v. Kumar, for example, a 2006 case of our Supreme Court, the court awarded damages to compensate the innocent spouse for her

"hurt feelings, humiliation, inconvenience and postponement of the opportunity to marry another man while she was still capable of bearing children"

as a result of the husband's misrepresentations which induced her to marry him.

Read More

CBC Reports on Fraudulent Marriage

CBC has reported today on the case of a Victoria woman who says that her husband duped her into marrying him just so he could immigrate to Canada. Although people enter into sham marriages all the time, it is always tragic when the sham is known only to one of the spouses.

When an innocent spouse has suffered real harm as a result of the deception, however, the court is usually happy to try to redress those wrongs. In the case of Raju v. Kumar, for example, a 2006 case of our Supreme Court, the court awarded damages to compensate the innocent spouse for her

"hurt feelings, humiliation, inconvenience and postponement of the opportunity to marry another man while she was still capable of bearing children"

as a result of the husband's misrepresentations which induced her to marry him.

Read More