Canada may become harder on marriages of convenience, indicates a latest case of the arranged marriage of an Indian-origin couple. With this case, concerns have been raised about the effect on marriages, arranged by families. The family-arranged union, between a couple, based in Hamilton, Bhagwat Verma and Dimpi cropped up the issue of marriages of convenience, where people get married to obtain the citizenship of a country.

As a result of growing number of such instances, the Citizenship and Immigration Canada started reviewing the country’s immigration rules to take some actions on such marriages. To this, Verma has to say that there are people who abuse the Canadian immigration system and practices getting married to obtain citizenship, but all couples are not the same. He also strongly believes the practice of marriage of convenience should be stopped. But, genuine arrange d marriages should be free from facing any problem.

According to the figures of Canadian immigration department, its overseas branches received 30,000 to 40,000 spousal sponsorships to Canada this year, out of which about 18 percent are refused, reason being many of them are marriages of convenience. It is still yet to know whether the CIC would make changes to its immigration policy or not, however, it has made it clear to its offices that they should refuse citizenship based on two criteria- if the relationship is illegitimate and if it is based on getting immigration status (marriages of convenience).