I have a question about my marriage
- Thread starter wmfdlsep
- Start date
wmfdlsep said:
You won't be able to get an annulment. Nevada (the U.S. state Las Vegas is in) lets you file for annulment in a very few situations:
What are the grounds for an annulment in Nevada?
There are limited reasons, or grounds, for getting an annulment in Nevada. You can get an annulment in Nevada for any of the following grounds:
lack of consent of a parent or guardian if consent was required
lack of understanding or insanity by you or your spouse
fraud, or lies, by you or your spouse that induced the other to marry
the marriage was illegal because you and your spouse are too closely related, or
you or your spouse was married to someone else at the time of your marriage.
"Lack of understanding" doesn't mean you failed to understand it was legal and binding. It means you weren't mentally competent at the time you or your wife signed the marriage license/certificate.
Since legal marriage in the U.S. is recognized world wide, you are now married as far as Canada is concerned. You made a very foolish choice playing "let's get married in Vegas"...
wmfdlsep said:
It won't matter. Your wife is now banned under family class so can never be sponsored by you. Doesn't matter if you get divorce/annulment and re-married later.
By any chance had you and your wife also lived together for 12 months before?
wmfdlsep said:
So you were common-law anyways, even if you weren't married. Doesn't matter what country you lived together.
This means even if the whole Vegas marriage thing never even happened, you would have still committed misrepresentation by not declaring her as your common-law partner, and she still would have been banned forever to be sponsored. Would not have mattered if you later got married.
There is realistically no way you can ever sponsor her now. Two times over. Whether you get the marriage annulled or not is irrelevant as the damage was already done.
You have 2 options:
1. Have her apply for PR independently as skilled worker or something
2. Renounce your PR status, and start again from scratch this time properly declaring her in your app.
Those are your only options. Taking this through a sponsorship, rejection, appeals, etc will cost you tons of money in lawyer fees and take many years, only to end in rejection at the end.
wmfdlsep said:
For your own PR status, you should not mention anything to CIC. The damage has already been done, so your only chance at this point is to hope they don't find out about it. Voluntarily reporting it to CIC may sound like you're doing the right thing, but would be a good chance it would end in them revoking your PR status and putting a temporary ban on you (not sure if it would be 1 or 5 years).
With option 1 your wife would need to have education/work experience that would qualify her to apply for PR independently. If this is a possibility, this is by far your best option.
Rob_TO said:
Thank you again for the comments. I have one more question about it.
So when I apply citizenship or extend my PR status, what marital status should I write? as single? Married?
I am planning to apply citizenship as soon as possible when it's available
wmfdlsep said:
Under current rules you need 4 years of physical residency as a PR, before you qualify to apply for citizenship. On any citizenship app or PR renewal, you would put whatever your actual marital status is.
Note that after becoming a citizen, it won't change the fact you can never sponsor your wife. You still won't be able to sponsor her.
If she can't qualify to immigrate independently, you will basically need to choose between her or Canada, or live long distance for the rest of your lives. In this case renouncing your PR status would be the logical choice.
I know this thread is old, but my wife and I just got out PR rejected. The reason was that we did not provide a marriage certificate.
We got married in Vegas, which is a legal marriage in the US. We are not US citizens. We proceed to upload the marriage certificate and we also provided an apostille (that recognizes the signature of the secretary of state of Nevada).
I was in shock when we received the refusal. I looked at the pdf document we uploaded and everything is fine.
By any chance, there is a new rule regarding Marriages in Vegas? They are not acceptable for immigration anymore?
The rule says that the marriage must be legal in the place that it was taken, and I know that the marriage in Vegas is legal.
Any insights on this matter?
Thanks
We got married in Vegas, which is a legal marriage in the US. We are not US citizens. We proceed to upload the marriage certificate and we also provided an apostille (that recognizes the signature of the secretary of state of Nevada).
I was in shock when we received the refusal. I looked at the pdf document we uploaded and everything is fine.
By any chance, there is a new rule regarding Marriages in Vegas? They are not acceptable for immigration anymore?
The rule says that the marriage must be legal in the place that it was taken, and I know that the marriage in Vegas is legal.
Any insights on this matter?
Thanks
There's no such new rule. I would order your GCMS notes asap if you haven't done so already to see the details behind the refusal. I would also request reconsideration.
I've done right after the refusal (july 3). Problem is that it's going to take more than 30 days probably for them to send the notes.
I don't know if there's a due date to ask for reconsideration...or if I can ask this after receiving the notes even though after 30 days from the refusal...
You should request reconsideration asap. It's not an official process so there is no timeline. But don't wait - ask for reconsideration now.
Appeals on the other hand have a limited timeframe within which you can trigger them.
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