Canada Fiancé, Boyfriend & Girlfriend Sponsorship

Fiance visa Canada

We need to start off with the fact that Canada does not have a fiance visa category. If you are not legally married to your partner, or you have not lived together for at least 12 months consecutively in order to achieve common law partner status, then there is no certain pathway to sponsor a fiance to come to Canada.

So then what are your options to have your friend come and visit you, so that you can spent time together and get to know each other better before deciding if marriage is the right pathway to pursue? Let’s talk about visitor visas.

Can I invite my girlfriend as a visitor to Canada?

Thus far, you have been thinking about the immigration system from the point of view of a Canadian or Permanent Resident who wants to spend time with a romantic partner. At this point, you naively expect that your government is going to support your heartfelt intention to find your true love overseas. May I gently suggest that we need to start thinking like a Canadian visa officer, if you are going to realistically understand the Canadian immigration options for your situation?

The main consideration for a visa officer when deciding whether or not to approve a visitor visa to Canada is not the purpose of the trip. The main consideration is what kind of a life does the applicant have outside of Canada. A visitor’s visa is intended for someone who will legitimately visit Canada, meaning they plan to come for a few weeks to see the mountains or visit family, and then they have matters that require their attention outside of Canada. They must show that they intend to leave Canada, and that their life outside Canada will be comfortable enough to return to.

Romantic relationships and ties to home country

Visa officers will consider the applicant’s financial situation, employment situation, past travel to other developed nations, assets outside of Canada and family situation as part of the picture that demonstrates quality of life for the applicant. If the applicant cannot demonstrate that their current standard of living is somewhat comparable to the usual standard of living in Canada, a visitor visa is likely to be refused. This is especially true when the applicant does not have strong family ties outside of Canada, like a spouse, or dependent children, whom they live with. When an applicant has a low standard of living, employment at a subsistence level or no employment at all and a love interest in Canada – all signs point to the probability that they will not leave Canada if permitted a visitor visa, because the financial and emotional ties are the strongest to Canada, not to their country of origin. When considered from this point of view, having a romantic relationship with a Canadian is going to work against the applicant. Let me say that again. In many cases, having a romantic relationship with a Canadian makes it more likely that a visitor visa will be refused.

This new and unwelcome insight invariably leads to protests such as, “But I’m Canadian, I pay taxes, I should be able to invite who I want to visit me.” The hard truth is that the visa officer is not looking at you, the Canadian. They are looking at the foreign national and their situation when making the decision to approve the application or not.

How to get home if the relationship ends

In many situations, your love interest may come from a country where the value of the local currency may not be high enough to pay for their trip to and from Canada, as well as pay for their living expenses while visiting Canada. The Canadian citizen is the one who will pay for everything related to the trip, and is willing to provide their financial information to Immigration Canada in order to get a visa approved. While it is certainly necessary to show that someone has the capacity to pay for the proposed trip, the fact that the Canadian “sponsor” holds all the cash is not necessarily reassuring to the visa officer. A situation of this type is viewed negatively for a couple of reasons – the availability of more cash in Canada than at home could be viewed as a strong tie to Canada and an incentive not to return home at the end of the visit. Another negative scenario could occur if the visit does not go as planned, the couple breaks up and the Canadian withdraws financial support from the foreign national. Now, who is going to pay for the flight home?

Safety concerns for foreign national

A further concern for visa officers is the safety of the foreign national inside of Canada. Applicants who do not have their own funds and who are relatively unsophisticated in terms of professional life and international travel could be at risk of exploitation by an unscrupulous Canadian citizen. Now of course, you are not an unscrupulous Canadian citizen and you would never think of exploiting someone from a foreign country that you met online, but those kinds of people do exist, even in Canada. IRCC wants to ensure that any decision they make does not place someone in danger. For that reason, the preferred method of having Canadians unite with their romantic partners in Canada is by means of a spousal or common law partner application. The reason is because there is a much higher level of scrutiny of the sponsor, the applicant and the relationship in a sponsorship application – and potentially harmful situations are more likely to be prevented in advance.

How can I bring my unmarried partner to Canada?

Now that we have considered all of the obstacles that stand between you and your romantic partner reuniting in Canada, let’s talk about what may be possible.

Visitor visas are possible. You need to understand that a visitor visa for your boyfriend to Canada is not guaranteed, but approval is possible if your boyfriend’s situation overseas is decent and your application is prepared with sufficient evidence.

Work permits are possible. If you can find a Canadian employer who is willing to jump through the hoops to hire a foreign worker, and if your romantic partner has the skills needed for the job, obtaining a work permit for Canada would certainly allow you to spend enough time together that you could make an informed decision about your future together. The difficulty with pursuing a work permit is going to be finding a Canadian company who is willing to complete their part of the process – as it is time consuming and expensive for the company.

Study permits are less realistic. Studying in Canada is expensive. If your romantic partner had the kind of funds needed to study in Canada in the first place, it is likely they could get a visitor visa approved. But, you say, you are willing to provide financial support for their studies. That’s really kind of you, but as soon as you tell the visa officer you are going to pay for their studies, you can expect the officer to decide that the student’s ties to Canada are too strong and also question whether or not the applicant is really a bonafide student.

Conjugal partner sponsorship is for extreme situations only. Although Canada has a program for conjugal partner sponsorship, a conjugal relationship does not mean that you met someone you are interested in. A conjugal relationship is considered to be a marriage like relationship, but for reasons outside of the control of the couple, they cannot legally marry and cannot cohabit for the 12 months required to become common law partners. The conjugal partner sponsorship category is intended for extreme situations only, such as where same sex relationships are illegal in their country of origin, or divorce from their first spouse is not permitted in the country where they live. If you have the opportunity to live together and establish a common law relationship, you are expected to do so, even if you have to leave Canada for that year.

Purpose of travel for Visitor Visa to Canada

There is one burning question that always comes up next. Why can’t we just say my romantic partner is coming to Canada to visit a friend, or planning to visit their relatives in Canada? It happens, frequently in fact, that someone will misstate the real purpose of their visit to Canada in order to make it more likely that their application for a temporary resident visa is approved. However, even if you don’t fully declare your real intentions, you still have to identify who is going to pay for the trip and demonstrate that the applicant’s usual standard of living is sufficient to include international travel as a tourist.

You need to consider what your next steps will be if the relationship works out, and you get married in order to be together forever. At some point, you will need to submit a spousal sponsorship application, or apply to extend your partner as a visitor. In both applications, IRCC will return to the initial visitor visa application package to decide if the applicant was telling the truth about the purpose of their visit to Canada. If it becomes apparent that your new wife lied about visiting their aunt in order to get a visa to visit you – then you can end up with immigration issues that you may not be able to resolve. The penalty for getting caught lying on a Canadian immigration application is a 5 year ban from Canada.

It is always recommended that you are truthful in any immigration application for Canada, and that you receive professional assistance, to ensure that your application has the best chance of being approved. As frustrating as it would be to receive a refusal on a visitor visa application, at least you still have the option to spend time with your romantic partner in their country of origin, and at some point you will be able to sponsor them if you decide to get married.

During your sponsorship application, the refused visitor application can serve as proof that your relationship has been ongoing for some time, and that IRCC has already decided your relationship is serious enough to form the basis of a visitor visa refusal. if you lie and receive a five year ban for misrepresentation, this can only be overcome by waiting out the time. You have no options to be together in Canada during that timeframe.