Guyanese Letitia Stevenson was divorced and not looking for anything but a quiet vacation when she came home nine years ago, but she found love and remarried a year later.
Canadian authorities rejected her application to sponsor her husband and for years she fought to get him over there; he finally gained entry in 2009 and six months later she got dumped.
“He only wanted residency,” Stevenson told Stabroek News yesterday and according to her, fraudulent marriages are on the increase in Canada. She said Canadian citizens are increasingly marrying foreigners who are only interested in the opportunity.
Stevenson, 59, was swept up in a whirlwind romance with the man five years her junior while vacationing here. The relationship picked up steam after she went back to Canada and for her, everything felt real. She recalled that his attention and love appeared genuine and after the marriage she travelled to Guyana once, sometimes twice a year. The relationship, she said, survived the ups and downs of the Canadian authorities, who rejected her application to sponsor her husband.
Stevenson, in love and longing to be with her husband, fought long and hard for him to go to Canada and she spent thousands of dollars in her efforts. She pleaded his case to the Canadian authorities, wrote many letters and kept at it until December 2009, when the application was accepted.
Stevenson chose not to mention her husband’s name to Stabroek News, but she has accused him of using her. She said after he went to Canada the way he treated her changed; he got distant and six months later he disappeared. She said too that he had also become verbally and emotionally abusive. “I don’t know where he is,” Stevenson said, but she is working on tracking him down. She is still hurting from the experience, but stressed that she is more concerned about it happening to other people. “This has happened to so many others and it has to stop,” she said, noting that the Canadian authorities have to crack down on fraudsters who pursue marriage with the intention of gaining permanent residency.
Prior to contacting Stabroek News, Stevenson told her story to the Brampton Guardian, an online news agency in Ontario, which pointed out that roughly 1,000 similar cases are reported annually.
According to the news agency, the Canadian immigration department has introduced a new regulation to make it easier for visa officers to deny a spousal relationship. And by later this year, the authorities will be able to reject an application if they believe the marriage is based on bad faith or is entered with the purpose of gaining immigration status.
Stevenson has written to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) enquiring about her husband’s whereabouts, but due to privacy legislation the agency was unable to provide her with any information without man’s consent.
She has since been encouraged to make a submission to the federal case processing centre where sponsorship was approved. In a letter to her, CIC said: “If they find it necessary, they may refer the case to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which is mandated with executing removal orders and conducting enquiries against permanent residents alleged to have engaged in fraudulent marriages.”
Stevenson has no idea what to do at this point except to tell people her story. The woman, who is currently in Guyana, said people “need to know what happened to me.”
