SenoritaBella said:
I very much doubt that. The condition worked in this case, where the applicant left within weeks and I support it.
The problem is with cases where the sponsor initiates the break up, uses it as a bargaining chip or behaves poorly(e.g. cheating) and the applicant leaves. I don't think it's fair in those situations to deport the applicant. The applicant would have given up a good paying job(in some cases), sold house, etc to move. Deporting him/her means they are left to start over and the Canadian sponsor "gets out" of paying spousal/child support which they would normally have to pay if immigration wasn't a factor or if the applicant is more wealthy, there is no way to enforce child/spousal support payments. In that case, taxpayers are footing the bill.
I also don't believe the role of immigration is to prosecute non-immigration related offences or family law(i.e. cases where there is no immigration fraud, misrepresentation, etc). A relationship can break down due to irreconcilable differences. But because one person immigrated as a spouse, there is automatically an immigration consequence attached to it.
What if children are born after landing in the first year of the relationship but it ends before 2 yrs? Deporting means one parent is separated from their child, another situation where I don't believe the powers that be have thought through. What about the best interests of the child(ren)? Who gets custody - the Canadian sponsor or the applicant? Will immigration stipulate that the parent who has the child and can afford it travel each year so the child spends time with the other parent? This is where Family Court comes in, they have the expertise to deal with such situations, not CIC/CBSA.
Something I find lacking to an extent in society is personal accountability. People are grown up or "have rights" when they go about making big decisions. But when it backfires, there is little ownership of what role they played in it. Then gov't steps in, in knee-jerk fashion and implements laws to appease a few. Some sponsors on the forum have admitted in hindsight that they dismissed the warning signs.
There are two conditions that can really exacerbate this issue: when the foreign partner has a radically different idea of the duties each person has within the marriage, and when the Canadian partner has an unrealistic idea of the foreign partner's approach to marriage. The first can make the foreign partner feel like they have been tricked, and the second can make the Canadian partner decide that their (usually 'his') new spouse is acting inappropriately.
The classic instance of the second is the common Western belief that Asian women are subservient. This is a bit of a funny cliche to anyone with a modicum of education -- but there are a lot of people who believe it, and there is a particular type of paranoid, abusive, MRA who has decided that Western women have been 'spoiled' but Asian women are 'natural'. This is also the kind of person who can be very difficult to live with, and who is ineffective at maintaining and growing a relationship. They can marry quickly, in the belief that a Thai or a Filipina bride is somehow 'safe'; and when they find out that she is actually a human, not some sort of automaton trained to serve men by her culture, they can be quite pissy.
This is obviously a stereotype -- but after living in SE Asia and seeing the stereotype drinking in bars and having wives run away as quickly as they can, one accepts that it does describe a certain percentage of the population.
The bride, on her part, comes from a culture where marriage often does not have a long courtship, and where the institution of dowry is very similar to the financial element that often exists in marriages like this. She has an idea of respecting her husband; but this comes with conditions attached to his behaviour as well, and often the idea that she controls the household, the finances, and often the husband. She may not realize the weird ideas that her husband has about her.
I don't see that empowering the husband in this situation is fair to the wife, and agree with the previous opinion that immigration law should not be used to limit or comment on family law, particularly where the results for the foreign partner can be damaging in a life-destroying manner. In a way, this is a matter of CIC failing to perform its own due diligence, and taking it out on the foreign partner. I think the 'buyer beware' provision, in which the sponsor is on the hook for three years, is a very fair option.
It's easy to find instances where this provision works as intended -- it would be hard to craft a law that has no good outcomes, ever. What matters to me is the instances where it has a very cruel outcome, or empowers an abusive partner, or forcibly divides a family in a manner that essentially 'deparents' one parent or leaves the children in a bad situation. I don't think anyone thinks that immigration law -- with its threats of deportation and exclusion -- is a useful instrument for custody disputes.