This article will highlight the spousal sponsorship and what kind of evidence to provide when you’re submitting a spousal sponsorship or common-law partner application.
Lots of people when they are putting together an application for Spousal Sponsorship often ask: what kind of evidence do we need to show? And my answer to that is it really depends on the type of application you’re submitting.
Of course, you can submit as spouses, common-law partners, or conjugal partners.
However, the article is about mostly spouses and common-law partners.
When you’re sponsoring your spouse or common-law partner, it also depends on whether you’re sponsoring from inside Canada or outside Canada.
If you’re sponsoring your spouse from outside of Canada which means that they are declared that they are living in another country and either you’re in that country with them
or you’re in Canada you really need to make sure that you provide proof of correspondence.
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What constitutes good support for correspondence? You have to make sure that know that you go back in time when the relationship first started.
So, if you met your spouse or common-law partner seven years ago and you’ve been in a relationship for that period of time, you need to think about providing correspondence seven years ago.
It could be texts, Facebook conversations, or phone calls. You have to provide conversations going back from when you first met, a few years later, and up to present-day.
If you can’t get Facebook messages or texts going back until then, you should try to provide proof of phone calls or if you met online, proof of conversations from when you first met or even commenting on each other’s social media statuses to show that there is a history of a relationship.
A lot of mistakes people make are just providing recent conversations, showing conversations for the last few weeks before they submit the application, and that’s just not providing the officer with enough information to show that you’ve known each other for a long time.
If you speak to one another in a different language such as Spanish, it is important to note that the correspondence is translated.
You need to have this information translated so that the officer can see that this is there’s a history of you speaking to one another.
And showing things with dates is always going to be the strongest evidence because it shows that there’s been a history of you speaking back and forth to one another.
Similarily with an out of Canada application, you also want to provide proof of visits.
A lot of the times people will submit proof of their airline ticket booking. Well, an airline ticket booking is okay but it doesn’t actually show that you took the flight or that you visited.
If you know you’re going to eventually sponsor your spouse or common-law partner, make sure that you have proof of visits. So these need to be boarding passes, which shows you actually took the flight and stamps in the passport.
So those are really helpful in showing that you’ve actually entered the country to see the other person.
If you are a permanent resident in Canada, if you’re going back to your home country, they’re not always going to stamp your passport if it’s from that country, right? So, that’s why those boarding passes become especially important in showing that you actually were visiting that country.
When it comes to proof of relationships from within Canada, you really want to show that you are in Canada and that you’re living together.
So, you’re going to show evidence that has both of your names with a common address in Canada.
People often provide evidence that doesn’t have an address on it like phone bills that don’t have an address on it, or they’ll provide documentation that has an old address on it or not both of their names.
When you’re submitting an application, there’s a list that IRCC gives you and they will ask for at least two out of the list of documentation.
You should endeavor to provide most of it because then you actually can show that you know you have multiple accounts together.
For example, it’s fairly easy to add someone to your phone account, whereas if you have a joint bank account, the joint IDs showing the same address, this will help convince an immigration officer that you were actually living together as a couple.
Be careful not to overdo it with the evidence.
All too often, applicants will provide 80 pages of correspondence when all that is requested from Immigration Canada is just to provide ten pages.
So my advice is to really go through the document checklist and see how much information Immigration Canada asks for.
So when it says ten pages of correspondence give them ten. When it says twenty photos, give them twenty photos and also ensure that what you’re providing is quality.
When you are preparing your application, think about what the officer is thinking when they see the photos. For example, they want to see that you are together with friends and family at different times.
Same thing for the letters of support from friends and family. Make sure it’s different people who have known you at different stages in your life and know both of you together as a couple.
So make sure that they can provide you a nice strong letter of support saying that the relationship is genuine and not just for the purpose of immigration.
Note: To be eligible to sponsor your spouse to Canada through Spousal Sponsorship, the sponsor must satisfy the following
- 21 years and above when submitting the application
- A Canadian Citizen or Permanent Resident
