Same-sex spousal sponsorship

[Kae12345]

Hello all,

I have a rather complex case.

I am a female, and my spouse is also female, but transgender. So I call him by a masculine name, and masculine pro-nouns. In the next decade a full sex-change will likely be completed. We are both also young, in our early 20s.

We met online, on a game. Neither of us were looking for a relationship, but once we found each other, nothing else really mattered. Before he moved to Canada, I had made two trips to visit him in the US (he's American.) He made a 1 week long trip to visit me in Canada. Our online relationship was only just over a year long when he moved to Canada to marry me.

Part of the issue is that our families are for the most part against our relationship because we are same-sex. We didn't even tell our families that we were more than friends until he moved to Canada. None of his family attended the wedding. Our wedding looks like it was fake, but we didn't have a huge bank account, and spent as little as possible, and just had it in my mom's backyard. Only 8 people attended. We also didn't take a honeymoon, because we couldn't afford it, and knew he wouldn't be able to work for a very long time, until the visa was approved.

We know each other extremely well, and would do anything to be together. I'm afraid that the VO will think that my spouse just wants to come to Canada for the health care to pay for sex-change surgeries.That isn't the case at all. He would have much rather had me immigrate to the US, but that wasn't an option at the time. Or I'm nervous that they just won't believe that we're actually in a relationship, because both of us come from backgrounds where a same-sex marriage just isn't done or accepted.

We applied for an inland visa September 2013, and other than AOR, haven't heard anything since. Does anyone have a situation like ours at all? Do you think that our application will take longer because of the complications, or be likely to be refused? I'm really nervous about all this!!

Thanks

 

[jenny12345]

I have a friend who had the same situation, their families didn't know. The wedding was attended only by a few friends with no family members. They sent pictures of trips together . They were approved with no difficulties and processed within the time frame given by the website. As long as your relationship is real and no red flags (i.e. previous marriage, unemployed sponsor, huge age gap etc. ) you should be fine.

 

[Dreamtwitch]

I think as long as you go into detail about your families' attitudes and provide a lot of proof of your relationship overall, you should be ok. The VO would have to be living under a rock to not realize many people still don't accept same-sex unions and that it could play a large part in ceremony attendance and finances.
Seeing as you applied inland, your application process will be lengthy because you are already together in person as opposed to outland where they want to reunite families as quickly as they can.

 

[Kae12345]

I have a friend who had the same situation, their families didn't know. The wedding was attended only by a few friends with no family members. They sent pictures of trips together . They were approved with no difficulties and processed within the time frame given by the website. As long as your relationship is real and no red flags (i.e. previous marriage, unemployed sponsor, huge age gap etc. ) you should be fine.

Thank you for your response. We sent in lots of proof, including tons of chat logs on facebook, and record of over 1400 hours of Skype calls. As well as the pictures, etc. I'm employed, we're nearly the same age and neither of us have been married before, so hopefully we won't have trouble either!

I think as long as you go into detail about your families' attitudes and provide a lot of proof of your relationship overall, you should be ok. The VO would have to be living under a rock to not realize many people still don't accept same-sex unions and that it could play a large part in ceremony attendance and finances.
Seeing as you applied inland, your application process will be lengthy because you are already together in person as opposed to outland where they want to reunite families as quickly as they can.

Thanks for your encouraging response. We thought that we had to apply inland if he was in Canada with me. I wish we'd been more informed, and done more research. I believe that inland applications are taking approximately 1 year to approve the sponsor. We're nearly to the 1 year mark, so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (our main thing is that we want him to be able to work, cause I don't have a career to support even a two person family off of.)

 

[Alurra71]

I think so long as you identified him correctly as 'she' on your application you shouldn't have too much of an issue.

The only problem I can see is if because she identifies as male, and you used he and male on the forms yet all identifying documents use she and female, well that could pose some questions and cause them to want to dig deeper into the situation.

Big weddings and lots of photos and such aren't such a big issue for US/Canada based couple. Most cases of marriage fraud do not originate in countries that are very close to equals on the quality of living scale.

Take a deep breath and relax. I think you'll be ok.

Best of luck to you and your husband.