Holy shit! Immigration Canada investigates immigrants' marriages to make sure they're "real" and not marriages of convenience. I am shocked and appalled and disgusted!
Even if they are marriages of convenience, as long as everyone in the marriage understands and agrees to the terms, who cares? As citizens, we can marry whomever we want under whatever circumstances we want and the state doesn't care. We can ask our parents to arrange a marriage, we can seduce a billionaire centenarian, we can have a chaste arrangement with someone of incompatible sexual orientation, we can post an ad on craigslist saying "I have breasts and insurance!" and marry the first person to respond, and the state is going to give a moment's care. But immigrants have to prove that they know each other well enough and like each other well enough to meet some functionary's qualitative standards? How dare the state demand this? We established, before I was even born, that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. But apparently it's allowed to poke around in the hearts and minds of the nation to make sure they like each other enough like some asshole father who enjoys tormenting teenage boys by interrogating them about their intentions towards his daughter, even if his daughter just wants him to STFU so she can take her date somewhere private and get some cunnilingus!
At this point some of you are wondering "Why are you, a huge fan of serious till-death-do-us-part marriage, advocating marriages of convenience?" I'm not advocating them. I certainly wouldn't want one myself! But then, I wouldn't want a marriage that involves child-rearing either. However, some people strongly believe that the purpose of marriage is "for the procreation of children" (I think that's the exact wording of wedding vows in some Protestant denominations). Now suppose I had some relatives who thought that and disapproved of my childfree marriage. Then suppose I died. Then suppose my relatives tried to get my spouse disinherited and kicked out of the country on the basis that our marriage wasn't real because we didn't have children. Then suppose some government agency took their complaint seriously and investigated it and interrogated my spouse and might actually kick them out on the basis that we didn't have children, even though we both agreed on being childfree, because the vast majority of Canadian marriages do have children?
That's just what they're doing here. They're investigating immigrants to make sure their marriages are similar enough to most Canadian marriages without even allowing for the possibility that they're consenting adults with their own unique arragement, even though citizens are allowed to have whatever bizarre arrangement they want without the state even throwing a glance in their direction.
I'm ashamed of us, Canada! This also makes me want to go get a marriage of convenience to somewhere cooler than us, like Europe or something, just out of spite.
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