Marrying ‘rather than love’ – an act of expediency for migrating to Canada
Recently a hype is created in Lovepreet and Beant Kaur Bajwa’s episode on social media and it is broadcasted on regional vernacular news channels in India and Canada. The internet community is demanding deportation and accusing Beant wife of Lovepreet, an Indian student living at Toronto, of abetment to suicide of Lovepreet. Chairperson of Punjab State Women Commission expressed her concerns over exploitation of Punjabi youth and urged Canadian PM Trudeau for rapid and stringent actions and creating robust systems to protect the vulnerable are efforts to open a can of worms.
Canada is now one of the world’s hottest destination of international students, with a staggering 642,000 foreign students. India is the largest contributor with 34 per cent and it nearly quadrupled in last five years. Canada offers a lucrative package, fast track study permit applications, opportunity for partners or children to join them in Canada, allowing them to work while they study, then obtain a post graduate work permit to gain Canadian work experience and eventually attain permanent residency through its more than 80 immigration streams. Most of students reported to Canadian Bureau of International Education that they are interested in becoming permanent residents of Canada after their studies.
Canada’s record low fertility rate, it compelled them to reoptimize their targets to 400,000 immigrants per year. Immigration was responsible 79% population growth in year 2019. The Conference Board of Canada predicted that 100 per cent of the country population growth will be through immigration by year 2034.
Today, children are opting at large scale to study abroad after class XII, with goal to settle there permanently. Roughly, 400,000 Indians are living in Canada as students, and temporary foreign workers. The data reveals that the girls have outnumbered the boys. Most of them are of marriageable age and in search of suitable alliance. Till not long ago, the girl child was considered a curse, suddenly, the girls have become precious.
The birth of a son, which is essential for an Indian family, particularly in Punjab, it has become a liability amid the rising unemployment levels, drug abuse, violence, stagnating agricultural returns, low industrialisation and poor standard of education. Moreover, an NRI relative flaunting his accomplishments by staking bricks till third storey of a house in fields with an aeroplane prototypes displayed in the rooftops, painted in bright colours had added to the most convincing reasons to look for ways to the west. Today, the entire rural families are prepared to compromise, even a marriage of convenience with a motivation to obtain visa for their children to migrate to western countries.
Ineligible, uncapable, incompetent and desperate to settle abroad aspirants have broadened the phrase into an opposition between ‘marrying for love’ on the one side and for ‘some other reasons than love’ for ‘expediency for migrating to Canada,’ on the other. The best thing about a marriage of convenience is that it's convenient. And convenience is an ever more exotic attribute in Punjabi youth’s aspirations to affluent life in Canada. The partners don’t have much of connections, but decided to get married perhaps because of their underlying motives.
The latest saying is marriages are made in heaven, but the conditions are imposed by partners on earth. Rural youth is ready to pay a huge amount to unknown travel agents to reach on western shores. A few settled abroad are up for grabs and even those eligible to migrate jumped on the bandwagon to encash this desperation to attain visas. Pre conditions and conditions are decided and agreed upon by families to facilitate the partner’s migration from India in exchange of monetary compensations, either lump-sum or staggered semester by semester tuition fee payments and living expenses or other benefits. The incriminating suspicion is that they are sacrificing their adult humanity or to save face in the community. Some of the black sheep are even darker than they appear, onus of selecting the right one is either on the mating sheep or the shepherd.
If one side of coin brings good luck, the other side brings bad. On the ‘pro’ side of such a lame foundation of marriage the family will see their child’s passport stamped with a visa prompting them to shop for bigger fluorescent-coloured suitcases and look forward for inward remittances in dollars. The ‘con’ side is everyone is not blessed to read their palm lines. Leave to enter and remain in Canada is a judgmental decision of the assessing officer, based on merits of the applicant and partner. Compliance with the regulations and intentions to follow the rules are evaluated in the light of presented evidence and circumstances. The processes are complex and tedious. Applications with deviations are declined. Then a marriage of convenience becomes like dragging the carcass of a necrotic relationship on your back for years and nothing short of soul killing.
Contrary to the ‘marriage of convenience’ there is significantly larger number of partners are ‘marrying for love’. The hue and cry created on social media and on television channels, pressing to bring in stricter immigration regulations and add provisions for deportation is going to jeopardise the fate, of those who in subsisting relationships and married for love, much to the dismay of the spouse who dreams of a bright-line freedom and married life on the other shore.
Although, in response to a TV anchor PM Trudeau commented “No we are not going to tighten immigration rules”, but added “We will continue to make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect vulnerable people around the world from these criminal practices”. The process, of synthesis of the intentions and identifying the malicious one, will affect the genuine applicants. It is unfortunate what happened in Lovepreet’s case, but according undue weight to such incidences, passing judgments and approaching authorities for actions, will diminish the chance of success of other immigrant applicants originating from the land of Punjab. These social media trials will lead to a rapid paradigm shift in the assessment of immigrant’s applications.
Written By –
Anuj Kalra an Immigration Consultant practicing for last 20 years at:
Omnisol
SCO 40 – 41, Sector 9D, Chandigarh
anujkalra@outlook.com
Phone: 9316103818