I met my husband, in 1998 in Havana, Cuba. We had then a short relationship that didn’t work as both of us had other priorities at the time. We exchanged a few messages after I came to Canada in 2001 but our exchanges died down to the point that they were close to nil due to the reality of my new life here and the amount of work I had to do plus learning the language, etc. In 2008, I went to Cuba and visited him at his place in Havana, what happened them was magical and we realized that what had happened ten years earlier was still alive and well. After lengthy exchanges we started to realize that there was nothing we wanted more than being together; at that point he still asked me for extra time as he wanted to wait for his son to graduate from music school –he did in the summer of 2009-; his mother was sick and the doctors couldn’t find what was wrong with her. Unfortunately she passed away in February 2010. A few months after all this proposed and I accepted. He had no more real ties to Cuba. His son had his own life; he was lonely and didn’t want to lose me again. That summer my mother and her husband came to Canada on a single-entry visa. I decided to go down to Cuba to get married as my mother could stay with my son in Canada in the meantime. My mother agreed. My son and I talked about this and he said that he would much rather me go and enjoy my honeymoon while he stayed with his grandma and her husband. We got married on August 3, 2010 and registered our marriage with the Canadian embassy on the 5th. I got back to Canada on August 8 and started the paperwork to bring my husband here. In February of 2011 I got a letter saying that my sponsorship had been accepted. June 23 I received a letter from the Canadian Embassy in Havana saying that they had got the paperwork on March 23 and that my husband would be called for an interview in 3 months. We were on cloud nine. I started making plans for a Thanksgiving with my husband in Canada…but they didn’t call him for an interview then. I was somewhat frustrated and sent a message to the Embassy on September 30 and they replied that the date for the interview was still pending and that no further action was required from me.
I was very optimistic and started making plans for a Christmas with my husband in Canada, a few more weeks went by and then they called him for his interview on December 6. We were really happy although it was unlikely that he would be here by Christmas anyway. I had sent several of our emails to the Embassy as well as pictures of our days together in Cuba and the receipts of 146 phone calls I had made to Adolfo from Canada. (Calling Cuba costs over 1.00 a minute btw) We were so sure that everything would go well…He was refused a visa on the grounds that our marriage was fictitious. The immigration officer that interviewed him decided that based on the fact that my parents and son weren’t present at the wedding which she said was very strange given the cultural expectations in Cuba. She also said that his answers were evasive. Well, some of the questions were so aggressively personal or inadequate that anybody would agree that an evasive answer is the only way to be polite; he was even asked if he had a girlfriend in Cuba at the time…she came close to insinuating that he had to have sex with someone in my absence.
At the end of the interview the officer mentioned some ‘gossip’ about our marriage not being real. My husband was dumbfounded; since when a serious immigration official takes gossip into consideration? On December 29, 2011 I hired a lawyer and started the appeal process. In April I got a copy of the book that had been sent from the Embassy to Immigration Canada. To my surprise I found a reference to ‘a letter received at our office stating that this is a marriage of convenience’, I kept on reading and found that’ on July 21, 2011 at 02:36:34 PM a Ms. Kathleen O’Connell ‘XREF;B047871062ADVISING OF PA'S POSSIBLE MOC, INFO PROVIDED TO BE CONFIRMED ON INTERV DATE’. I guess that ‘MOC’ stands for ‘Marriage of Convenience’, this Kathleen O’Connell is the ex-wife of a friend of my husband’s. It is hard to imagine that this lady did this to get back at her ex-husband (!!??) I have never met this lady, she doesn’t even know me. I have been trying to get a copy of that email by invoking my right to access any information that affects me in a direct way but so far this has been unsuccessful. I feel I have the right to know what she wrote to the Embassy since it was used to turn our lives upside down.
On June 5, 2012 I got a letter from Immigration Canada in which I was advised that mediation would be allowed in our case and that an officer would call me for an appointment sometime soon. I called them to let them know that I would be in Cuba between July 5 and 12, 2012 and then I called them again after coming back, it was then when they gave me the terrible news that the mediation would take place only in October 2013. I don’t understand how, if only a few people are given the possibility of mediation, my mediation hearing will be more than a full year away. Can anybody answer my question
What is left for me other than work like crazy so I can go down to Cuba whenever I can to see my husband and please immigration? For which I’ll have to take time off work. I support my parents in Cuba; I am the only breadwinner at home. I have to help my husband as well; Immigration Canada still expects that I provide evidence of my sending money to him as well as frequent visits to Cuba. Can anybody tell me how to do that while I work?
I feel like a second class citizen, that Ms. O’Connell went to Cuba and got married without the company of her family and nobody questioned that, why? Is it because she was born in Canada? Now she writes and email that turns my life upside down for nothing. Why does someone who can’t prove that our marriage is fictitious has that kind of credibility? Why? Is it because she works for the government? I just can’t stop wondering.
The agent advised me that perhaps CIC would begin processing our application late next week. I'm not getting my hopes up.
