William Chow's Personal Web Page

My Experience With Immigration Canada

I am certainly not the first person to love someone abroad. I am not even the first person of all my friends who went through the ordeal of going through Canadian Immigration for their spouse. However, it is an important chapter in my life and an experience I can share a bit about to other people who are going through the motions.

At this point in my life, a good number of my friends are getting married off. Colin has a wife from Saudi Arabia, Ed got married to a woman from his parents village in China, Jame's wife is from Seattle, Fonda got secretly married with a girl from Hong Kong, and Kieth got set up by his mom with someone from China, and so on. So, it really seems to be the minority thing to do get married to someone who is already Canadian.

So before embarking on my trip to China, I did my research. I even paid $2000 for an immigration firm named COIBIS, to help me with the paper filing process. In the end, the paper filing was not totally mindless but it was tedious, many pages of the same thing, and ultra important that is filled in perfectly. The other very important thing for me by hiring a firm was that it provided Manderin customer support and Chinese text translation, as the form does require English only (Pinyin) answers to the questions.

So, if you are getting married in China, one the biggest things you will need is your passport (duh!) and something called a "single certificate". It is something that you can go to a notary office to get, and it is simply a notarized statement saying you are a single man.

After, we got married, then we gave all the paper work to the COIBIS people to fill out and process and file and send into the government. From there they will review our case and if it is good enough they will let her in. Otherwise, if they suspect another motive like getting married for money, to escape, or to get a passport or reasons other than love, then they may go for more investigation. One of the things you will each have to make is a "love" letter to explain your case and prove that you love your spouse. Here is mine that I wrote, "doctored" up a bit. Please don't copy it, just use it as a reference or for ideas.

Anyway, after getting all that stuff it is submitted, we wait. And wait. So after six months, we get a reply from the government that we need to do an interview.

The interview is actually only with her. She has go to the Canadian embassy in Beijing to conduct the interview. They will ask her a series of questions about our relationship, and over the telephone call me long distance to ask me the answers for those questions. If they match good enough, then we pass. If they don't match at all, they will reject you. If they match too well, then they will suspect you studied and planned the whole thing and then they will reject you. So, I went on the internet mostly to forum BBSs to see what I am up against, since I am the type that doesn't like surprises. My wife did the same thing, and found that there were a lot of obvious cases of fake marriages getting tossed out, which is good. But also there was a lot of legit cases that had to endure extra long processes of appeals and lawyers and etc. So, you need to know what to expect but at the same token, don't know it so well that it looks like you practiced and memorized it. I have compiled a list of questions and translations of questions pulled from the BBSs. I put this here to so you know what you might be expected to know but as I said, don't use this as a way to cheat immigration because they will just reject you if you are a fake.

Well, good luck on your case. Canada is a wonderful country to live in, treat her well.