The internet has made the world a smaller place, bringing people together in more ways than one. It is not uncommon in this day and age for people to fall in love using the language of bits and bytes, zeroes and ones. But being romantically involved online is one thing, and convincing the immigration officer that one’s internet love could be sponsored to Canada is another.
Armel and Antoinette had met face to face a couple of times before, but it was through emails and phone calls to each other that their relationship blossomed.
Armel met Antoinette in Cuba in 1996. Armel was then a student in Cuba while Antoinette was there on vacation.
They probably hit it off at their first meeting in 1996 because that same year Armel got on a plane and paid Antoinette a visit, and they spent the Christmas holidays together. Following Armel’s visit, however, there was no contact between the two until eight years later.
Armel and Antoinette caught up with each other, not in some romantic beach spot or other exotic getaway, but in the hustle and bustle of the World Wide Web. By then, Armel had landed in Canada to become a permanent resident.
They got hold of each other’s email address through a common friend. An exchange of emails and phone calls followed, and soon a romantic relationship developed.
Armel became a Canadian citizen in 2006. Not long after, Armel sponsored Antoinette. He indicated in the sponsorship application that they were conjugal partners. In support of the application, Armel submitted proof of money transfers to Antoinette. Armel presented written statements and testified about his romantic involvement with Antoinette. Antoinette herself and a friend gave their testimony. Most of all, Armel submitted the emails exchanged between him and Antoinette and the telephone calling cards they used to call each other, as proof of their conjugal relationship.
Armel and Antoinette met up after the filing of the sponsorship application. This was only the third of their face-to-face meetings. This was more than 10 years after their second rendezvous in 1996.
The sponsorship application was denied by the immigration panel on the ground that Armel and Antoinette were not conjugal partners as defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (SOR/2002-227). Under section 2 of the Regulations, the term “conjugal partner” means “a foreign national residing outside Canada who is in a conjugal relationship (with the sponsor) for a period of at least one year”.
Section 4 of the Regulations requires that the conjugal relationship be genuine and not entered into solely for the purpose of acquiring status or privilege under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, S.C. 2001, c. 27.
Armel went to court for a review of the denial of his application. The issue of whether Armel and Antoinette were conjugal partners was at the heart of the controversy in Mbollo v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2009 FC 1267.
The federal judge took note of the factors considered by the immigration panel in determining whether the conjugal union was just a means of entering Canada as a member of the family class.
According to the panel, the couple did not cohabit before the sponsorship application was filed, and was together only for a brief period in 2007.
The panel was not able to tell whether Armel and Antoinette were engaged or had intention to marry, since their respective testimony and written statements were inconsistent with one another.
While concluding based on the testimony of the couple and their friends that they were romantically involved with each other, the panel said this was not enough to support a finding of a conjugal relationship based on how others may have perceived it.
The panel acknowledged there was evidence that Armel supported Antoinette financially, which was indicative of a conjugal union. On the other hand, evidence of emotional support was lacking. For one, Antoinette knew very little about Armel’s life in Canada.
Finally, the panel noted that the couple had no children, and there were no shared duties or services between them apart from the fact that Armel had sent money to Antoinette.
As a whole, the panel was not convinced that whatever Armel and Antoinette had between them had ripened into a conjugal relationship as defined in the Regulations. The federal judge agreed with the panel. Quoting the panel with approval, the judge said that the “contact between the two is too limited in several areas including intimacy, cohabitation, life-sharing events and knowledge of each other’s hopes and dreams.”
The judge was also aware of inconsistencies in the testimony of the couple and their witness regarding the status of their relationship. Most of the evidence, according to the judge, were emails and telephone calling cards showing that the two kept in touch with each other. While conceding that the couple were romantically involved, the judge was not prepared to find a genuine conjugal union contemplated by the Regulations because of their failure to prove it by credible evidence. The judge thus affirmed the denial of the sponsorship application.
The internet has given romantic relationships a whole new twist. You can get romantically involved these days without ever getting a chance to look into your lover’s eyes as he or she says those sweet nothings you have longed to hear. An email, or even a text message, could be the only thing you are going to get. For the immigration officer, however, this will simply not do. It is going to take more than emails and phone calls to prove the existence of a conjugal relationship for sponsorship purposes.