After twice failing his immigration interviews due to nervousness, Hui Xin Liang on his third attempt brought with him notes prepared by his lawyer detailing his courtship with his Canadian wife.
However, an immigration officer at the Canadian visa post in Hong Kong said the “cheat sheets” found in his bag were proof that Liang’s marriage to Wei Hong Xie of Toronto was a fraud and rejected the couple’s latest spousal sponsorship application.
Last summer, the couple thought their ordeal was over when an Immigration and Refugee Board appeal tribunal overruled the officer’s decision. However, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney subsequently appealed the tribunal’s decision to the Federal Court of Canada.
After another year of delay, Liang, a driver, and Xie, a restaurant worker, recently won the final round of the battle when the court dismissed the minister’s request.
“Mr. Liang was not a sophisticated person. The board found that the ‘cheat sheets’ were used only as a memory aid and not for any improper purpose. . . . The board accepted that such preparation was reasonable and that the contents were true,” wrote Justice Catherine Kane in her ruling.
“The standard of review is reasonableness and the decision of the board, an expert tribunal, is owed deference.”
Xie was sponsored to Canada by her first husband in 1999, but the two divorced in 2002 due to his extramarital affair. She met Liang, a friend’s brother, during a visit to her family in Shen Zhen, China, the following year.
The couple later developed a long-distance relationship and were married in China in January 2005. Xie twice tried to sponsor her husband to Canada but was rejected because Liang was too nervous to answer even some of the basic questions at the interviews by immigration officials.
“The husband (gets) tongue-tied and brain freeze whenever he’s under stress. He was unable to concentrate and give a straight answer,” Mohsen Seddigh, an assistant to the couple’s lawyer Cecil Rotenberg, said Friday. “Our clients are very happy with the court’s decision.”
Lawyers for Kenney argued that the Immigration and Refugee Board appeal tribunal unreasonably accepted the reason for the use of the “cheat sheets” as due to Liang’s nervousness and poor memory. Genuinely married persons would not need to be reminded of basic information, they contended.
The respondents, however, said the notes were simply analogous to the preparation counsel would undertake in a face-to-face meeting with a client. And since Liang was in China and did not speak English, the written material was an appropriate alternative.
In endorsing the appeal tribunal’s decision, Kane also cited the couple’s persistence in getting Liang to Canada despite two failed attempts, his financial support to his wife and the fact that he never sought to visit Canada before the marriage even though he has close family in Toronto.
Although the couple’s case still needs to be assessed by a new immigration officer, Seddigh said both the appeal tribunal’s and court’s decisions clearly vindicated the genuineness of the clients’ relationship.