What irritates me most about stories like these is the way these "he said/she said" debacles become news. Pretty soon, lots of people have an opinion about Family Class immigration that is anything but flattering, and it gives the impression that these cases are among the majority and that is why they make the news. From CIC's own statistics it should be obvious that they are in the minority, but no-one quotes these statistics, what the media are interested in is the sensationalist and salacious aspects of the stories.
Worse, when they become frivolous lawsuits and/or refugee claims, these people take their dirty linen one step further and clog up already slow immigration processes and waste resources that could be dedicated elsewhere.
The attitude of the husband in the first case and the wife in the second is contemptible. They obviously feel entitled to something, and I would like to know exactly what that is. What does either of them think Canada owes them? They are not the first people to enter into fraudulent marriages, (if we take their side), and they certainly won't be the last. How does this become CIC's problem to compensate them for their spouse's lack of morals/ethics/whatever? The fact that immigration is a part of their relationship is no-one's responsibility but their own. As my husband often says, "Suck it up, buttercup"!
He had right up until the moment before he signed whatever papers makes the marriage legal to back out, it is ridiculous to assert that he had no idea she was confined to a wheelchair until the day of the wedding and thus was unable to back out before that point. And I am fairly sure she did not arrive from the airport to the temple or wherever they were married dressed in all her wedding finery for the ceremony, so he had plenty of time to change his mind before then.
For her to claim she deserves some kind of refugee protection because she is an "abandoned wife" is nonsense. Jason Kenney is right, no-one should get on a plane bound for a foreign country without first verifying they have status to do so. Especially should you not do so when you married a complete stranger whose feelings you are not sure of. Where is the commitment to you that you are supposed to rely on? Again, it is her husband's problem to keep her in Canada, not Canada's. At no time did Canada guarantee her anything, it was her husband she made vows with. That he proved untrue to his word does not obligate Canada to uphold his promises, marital or otherwise. So Canada does not owe her anything because he backed out of their arrangement, whatever it was.
That there are a high percentage of fraudulent marriages coming out of Southeast Asia, especially India and China, and yet the two visa offices processing these applications consistently has better timelines than any other says a great deal about what countries Canada places priority on when it comes to accepting immigrants. In the time it takes the visa office I am going through, for example, to process 80% of its applications (17 months), an application going through New Delhi can be received, processed and rejected, appealed and be upheld or over-turned! That's right, someone from New Delhi could get TWO shots at a PR in the time it could take me to have just one. There's a serious imbalance in there somewhere.
Stories like these, overall they just annoy me. They trivialise the struggles of real long-distance couples to be reunited, and waste time and resources better used elsewhere. These are just attention-seeking ploys, and it is a crying shame they are entertained by the media, lawyers and other advocates, when so many more deserving causes are out there.