wildemam said:
Hello everyone, I've been reading through this large, extensively useful thread. However, it is too huge to be able to cover.
I need your advice please. I am about to get married in Egypt. I knew my fiancee for a long time and her brother is my friend since childhood. We went to the same schools. I came to Canada in 2013 and became a PR in April 2016.
However, we have no evidence that we had correspondence until August 2016. She just graduated in 2015.
In August 2016 I went on a holiday to Egypt to have an engagement. I have enough evidence that it is not fake, Lots of photos with family and with proper formal clothing for the ceremony. I have also Photos of me with her and our siblings in outings.
I intend to get married in December 2016. I will be able to spend a month in Egypt before having to go back to Canada for my work. We are planning a traditional ceremony with all of our families and friends attending. We will also have several outings and will have photos in several outings.
I plan to submit our application around March 2017.
I need your advice on what to do so that we avoid any complications with our sponsorship and PR applications.
thanks,
"... we have no evidence that we had correspondence until August 2016" - you really need to find some kind of evidence, otherwise you will likely have a hard time. A great many of us in the Appeals forum had sent in reams and reams of emails, chat logs, photos, etc. to show the genesis and development of our relationship, yet were still refused for not having a genuine marriage.
No evidence of development of relationship, relative of a "friend", getting married so soon after becoming a PR yourself ... those are indicators of a possible marriage of convenience. But on the bright side, you seem to have been doing everything right since August. And I've seen people on this board lately that I was sure would be refused, but they were granted their visa without even as much as an interview. Hopefully, that's a sign that they are changing the way they are assessing these applications.
How have you been corresponding? I find it hard to believe that both of you have totally deleted your email and chat history, destroyed your phone bills, didn't take any photos of any of the times when you were together prior to your engagement, etc. Would you be able to dig up any emails that either of you might have sent to a third party, talking about each other, or your relationship? Did they take any photos of the both of you together? Maybe those third parties might not have been so meticulous about cleaning up their mailbox? How about passport stamps for the times that you have traveled to meet her, or vice-versa, in the past? How about any correspondence when you were planning your engagement, prior to August? All gone too? Anything would be better than nothing at all. Maybe affidavits from various people, in their own words, attesting to your relationship prior to your engagement.
Girls tend to be very sentimental, and hang on to every little note, and every little keepsake from their "boyfriend". It's hard to believe that she would have disposed of all that.
"I knew my fiancee for a long time ..." - knowing someone is different from having a relationship with that person. You'll need to be able to explain how it grew from simply knowing her as your long-time friend's kid sister, to something more serious. Then how it developed into what you have now.
Was your engagement the first time that you've physically met each other? I know of lots of long-time couples that never met each other until shortly before they were married. But that was not unusual for their culture, and for their time. And it doesn't mean that their relationship was any less genuine than a couple that had a long courtship.