If you were granted a permanent residence status in Canada through Family Class Sponsorship (Spouse), you will now have to wait for five years from the day you were granted a permanent residence status before you can sponsor a new partner. Prior to this new policy, a sponsored spouse or partner arriving in Canada as a permanent resident could leave their sponsor and sponsor another spouse or partner themselves, while their original sponsor was still financially responsible for them for up to three years.
Spousal sponsorship is open to abuse when a person enters into a relationship – such as a marriage or a common law partnership – in order to circumvent Canada’s immigration law. Concerned with the problem, the Minister held online consultations in the fall of 2010 to gather public opinion and ideas on how to best address marriage fraud.Read the while article from Citizenship and Immigration Canada website.
“Many of the people who took part in the consultations made it abundantly clear that marriage fraud poses a significant threat to our immigration system,” added Minister Kenney. “Our government has listened to the victims of marriage fraud and all Canadians, and acted to crack down on those who engage in fraud and abuse Canadians’ generosity and our immigration system.”
This policy against marriage for convenience is similar restrictions imposed by Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
