@ locolynn:
Did you mean the opposite...younger man, older woman? This tends to be a much more suspicious marriage in the eyes of immigration.
of course, you're right - my mistake.
and I agree that 9 years seems to be a good argument. I don't know the specific details of canadianwoman's case, however - playing devil's advocate here, one could simply argue in the other direction: what happened in those 9 years? was the couple living together? what took them so long to apply for a visa? does the couple have children resulting from this marriage - if no, why not? Again, this raises even more questions when you try to see it from the view of a conservative CIC officer or judge who feels the need to protect you as a canadian citizen (even though you might give sh*t)...
and again if the woman is older (I got it right this time), the sponsored person has relatives in canada, etc. the stats play against them.
If you don't have really really good answers to these questions, you're screwed...
I feel sorry for canadianwoman but I kind of understand CIC as there have been a number of cases of runaways recently that went through the press (one case was of a canadian woman with indian decent sponsoring a younger indian man. the case was refused in the first place, but they won the appeal. the first thing hubby did after landing was ditching her). If I were in canadianwoman's situation, I would move to him and re-apply in 1-2 years by pro-actively addressing potential doubts...
....
