Cover Letter Spousal Sponsorship

[Nothing]

Hi Everyone,

I have two questions about cover letter. I know it is not required but recommended to provide cover letters.

My questions are:

1. Do the sponsor and the principal applicant- both- need to provide separate/individual cover letter?

2. Who should we address the cover letters to- is it Visa Section Officer at Embassy in Singapore or designated official in case processing center at Mississauga?

thanks n regards

 

[truesmile]

I've never heard that it was "recommended". We didn't submit one from either of us. But then, our VO was Manila, not Singapore.

 

[mikeymyke]

Singapore is a brutal VO, you need to provide as much solid proof and relationship background to them. You don't HAVE to, but you really should provide cover letters from both sides. Just do what I do and say "To whom it may concern".

Be DETAILED. Explain how your relationship began from beginning to now. Explain what attracted you to your spouse, how you went from friendship to relationship to engaged to marriage. Explain why your relationship is genuine (ex. we only have 3 yr age difference, same cultural background/religion, similar education, both our families came to wedding, spent time with spouse's family often, etc). Explain how your marriage was not done for PR status (ex. we have made detailed plans as to what to do should the PR application be refused, your spouse's family are all in his/her home country and no relatives are in Canada, hence no pull factor, spouse stated in chat conversations many times it doesn't matter whether you guys live in Canada or other country, spouse went to the US as a student and left voluntarily, spouse only wants to come Canada to be with you, only comes to Canada because he/she follows wherever you go, more than happy to live in other country if PR fails. (the examples I gave are from my wife and I)

The reason you should address the genuineness of relationship and why your relationship was not done for PR is because those are the 2 primary reasons a PR is refused: If the marriage was not genuine, or was done for PR.

 

[truesmile]

Singapore is a brutal VO, . . .

Ya, I thought that might be why. I couldn't say that from my own experience however.

 

[mikeymyke]

Ya, I thought that might be why. I couldn't say that from my own experience however.

Processing time went from 12 months to 30 in just 5 years. The VO has a low acceptance rate of 72%, which is the 2nd lowest acceptance rate in the world, behind Accra VO's 55% rate. Yes it's definitely not an easy VO. Just getting an interview queue alone adds an additional year to the processing time, and a refusal will be another year on top of that.

According to CIC, the #1 source of applications arriving to Singapore VO are family class applications from Vietnam, which is a high marriage fraud country. The VO also handles numerous other countries that are quite low income/poor in comparison to rest of Asia, so there are more people who want to come to Canada, whether legitimate or not, this contributes to the increasing processing time as well.

When someone goes through Singapore VO, it is imperative they put together a solid package with minimal red flags, loads of relationship evidence, and NO missing documents.

I really feel sorry for anyone who has to sponsor a spouse from there, 10 years from now, because the processing times aren't going down.