Canadian resident Parminder Singh Pannu is not a happy man. He misses his new bride who is still stuck in India. The Canadian government won’t let her into the country to live with her man because they don’t believe the two are legitimately married. Why the suspicion? Well, just look at their wedding picture. They don’t look very happy. The Vancouver Sun reports:
Delta resident Parminder Singh Pannu thought his luck had changed when he married his second wife Ranjit in India in November 2002.
Almost three years earlier, his first wife Anupinder died of breast cancer at 43, leaving him a widower. And three years before that, he nearly died when he was sliced from head to hip by a dagger at Surrey’s Guru Nanak temple during a protest by fundamentalist Sikhs.
But Pannu is more frustrated than ever now because the federal Immigration Department is refusing to allow his 36-year-old bride into the country, calling the marriage bogus…“Your marriage is not genuine and was entered into primarily for the purpose of acquiring permanent residence in Canada,” a 2005 rejection letter states…
One of the government rejection letters said the pair looks too stiff in some pictures to be a real married couple.
Pannu tried to explain to the Immigration people that Sikhs aren’t down with PDA. THAT is why they look so stiff:
Family friend and community activist Gurnam Singh Sanghera said the comment is outrageous and shows the Canadian official does not understand Sikh culture, in which public shows of affection are not typical.“I have probably never hugged my wife in public,” Sanghera said Sunday. “How can they tell this from a picture? Are they psychic?”
<
p>Pannu’s son Byron is getting married pretty soon:
Byron is getting engaged in December and was hoping his stepmother could finally be here to perform the role of mother in the ceremony marking his pending marriage.
I have just one piece of advice for Byron: Smile during the wedding pics.
This is disgusting. I don’t know what else to say after reading this article. How can the Canadian government get away with giving such subjective reasons for denying his wife citizenship? I look at my Hindu parents wedding photo, and they do not look really happy or affectionate either, but are happy and have had a 30 year marriage. I don’t know what the divorce rate is like in Canada, but in America, thats pretty damn good.
If public displays of affection are the main criterion, many British couples would fail.
Ironically, because of biometric facial imaging, the U.S. and many other countries are now telling people to pull a Soviet Union and not smile in their passport photos.
look stiff?
Oh, ok..not like that…
And Canada too! (I just had mine done and they look pretty ghastly).
This guy should just gather up a bunch of videos of marriages in India and show the government that looking like someone just punched your mother in the face is a deep deep cultural aspect of wedding days in India.
Sardars are big on jhappis(hugs) and displaying pda between men. That could be misunderstood for something else.
LOL!
The ignorance! How can you make such assumptions just from a couple of pic’s? My parents have been happily married for 25 years , but if you look at my mother’s wedding pic’s, i’ve honestly seen more happier people at funerals!! But they are happy.
I can’t stop laughing to myself, just thinking that such close minded people are put in positions of authority.
They should consult cutural experts before they come up with ideas such as these. I’m sure this cultural misunderstanding extends far beyond this particular topic. We live in a global village, and the ability to be sensitive to other races is vital, if the government wants to show the world that they are an open country to all kinds of people.
Manish buddy, that particular stereotype is about 30 years out of date — Brits here grope and snog each other in public as much as anyone else these days 😉
I do agree that basing judgements on desi marriage photos is a very bad idea — consider how many black & white wedding photographs there must be out there with the bride & groom both looking miserable and standing about 5 feet apart from each other ! I remember Russell Peters making some very accurate jokes about this during one of his stand-up comedy shows too.
Germans do not want people to smile for their passport pictures
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d51ee8d0-50c6-11da-bbd7-0000779e2340.html
While this is an unfortunate case of an autentic situation gone awry, it is caused by many many people who actually do enter into sham marriages for entering a country like the US or Canada.
I once heard this woman narrating how she divorced her husband in India on paper, found a woman here to marry her husband on paper for $10k and then come back with him as her spouse.
So i aksed her wasnt she uncomfortable with another woman pretending to be her husband’s wife and the potential for intimacy? She said, as long as he could enter the country, se didnt care. there was also a child involved.
She proceeded to tell me (like I was the naive one) how so many men marry women from India for money and bring them here as spouses. This distrust of the immigration officials, while unjustified in this case, is caused by irregular and illegal conduct of many brethren from India.
Also there are communities which bring children from family to be brought up here and be employed in family businesses. Since everyone has the same last name and, there is facial resemblance of features, that works. I once hear of a couple who brought back 7 kids, none of whom were teir own, proceeded to educate them and them emply them in businesses. They view this as doing something good for the family and do not think there is anything wrong with what they are doing.
Basically, immigration officials would do well to employ Indians who would be able to distinguish the authentic cases from the fraud ones much more astutuely.
Sumita
Are they serious?! It wasn’t until I got some of the impromptu shots back from my wedding, that I noticed for the first time that my Dad even had teeth– I’d never seen them before!
Ask the people at Beads of Paradise, they know browns don’t smile in photos 😉
Just last month, my city’s main newspaper was running a series about how some cruel Desi-Canadian men were trying to cheat families in India by asking for huge doweries and then leaving with the money after the wedding, never to be heard from again. And then, I’m cornered at work by people who’ve read the article, asking me for my “opinion” in an almost accusatory way.
Suffice it to say that desi weddings are increasingly being taken as fodder for curious “interest pieces” in an amusing/disparaging capacity… despite occasional screenings of Monsoon Wedding on CBC 😛
desi dancer–“ask the people at Beads of Paradise” hahahahaha…sorry i just got up and i’m already laughing my ass off.
it’s pathetic that the sole reasoning in denying this poor couple’s visa is a series of photographs. obviously, they don’t know anything about South Asian culture and PDAs.
lastly, i hate the new policy of no smilely photos for passports. i went to get photos for my renewal, brought them home, and showed them to my mom who promptly to go back and get them retaken because she thought i looked like a prostitute. so thank you U.S. gov’t. because of you, i’ve now had to hear my mother use the word ‘prostitute’ in reference to me.
While I hope to be grinning ear to ear when I end up getting married, it’s by no means required. It’s ignorant to look at their lack of PDA out of context. If you’re dealing with a couple that may have been arranged, maybe she just hadn’t warmed up to him yet at that point. Or maybe she was sad at the thought of her hubby leaving her until she could cop a visa. Who cares if they were stiff in their pictures? Maybe they were just in frustration waiting for their wedding night. Sheesh.
Anyone who has endured an exhausting long Indian wedding (in India)with all the heat and noise and general disorder will understand what happens when it is picture taking time. The groom and bride just want everything to be over and hence the grim pictures. And if you add the unfamiliarity of the respective partners in an arranged marriage it is no wonder that the bride and groom look anxious and worried and distant.
The article says one of the letters states the couple looks too stiff to be a couple. I wonder what the other letters said, and what other reasons were given for the denial? Is there more to the story, or not?
I have, as usual, two minds on this based on personal experience. One is knowing of people who faked their way into the US (ok, I can’t prove it, it’s a strong suspicion, but I stress, I have no proof that this is the case) and I know of someone who tried to bring an adopted child into the country and was denied because the immigration officials thought they were cheating with the Indian adoption. Sadly, cheating does occur and does harm the majority who are trying to do things the right way. And lastly, when dealing with a government agency messing up, plain old incompetence is often a good way to go…
Sumita – that is an intriguing point about using knowledgeable people as immigration officers. I wonder what the statistics are on illegal immigration in Canada (and I’m sure there are plenty of European illegal immigrants as well. They tend not to get as much press).
not sure if i should laugh or be angry at the ignorance..
While sober? 😉
MD:
Come on… There may be very legitimate reasons why the Canadian government would not process this request, but the very fact that facial expressions were even brought to consideration is absolutely ludicrous.
There are estimated to be about 200K illegal immigrants in Canada, a fairly small number disproportionatly concentrated in Ontario’s hot home construction sector (carpenters, framers, etc).
That’s different from immigration fraud, where a person enters legally on false pretences (like a sham marriage). I don’t know what the numbers are for that.
However, Punjabi immigration has been a sensitive point in the past, and one of the reasons Canada was reluctant to open a visa office in Chandigarh was immigration. It may be that case officers working on Punjabi immigration are especially vigilant.
(And once the Chandigarh office was finally opened, the whole Bupinder Liddar affair unfolded!)
Well, Hari, I’m inclined to believe this gentleman. I should have said I’m of two minds about the kind of comments that followed. My error. His wife died, he was lonely, he wanted another wife. Perfectly reasonable.
And facial expressions as a litmus sounds ridiculous to our ears because we understand the difference in culture – which is why Sumita makes a good point about a better educated immigration officer. How do you prove fraud in immigration? It happens, and in some instances the person immigrating suffers terribly because they are used by the person setting them up to come abroad. And loads of innocents suffer, because they do nothing wrong and come under suspicion.
How do we (US or Canada) create a better immigration officer, or system? I’m interested in ideas. Anyone? My own immigration story is funny – I went for an interview as young ‘un (12 or 13, can’t remember the exact age) and I read this little book cover to cover so I would be ready for the test. I love America! And then, I got there and the immigration officer said, “why are you here? You’re already a citizen?” What? Big, fat, thick file in front and an interview arranged, and then, this? Very odd. Bizarre, byzantine and overly bureaucratic, that’s my experience with immigration. Underfunded, poorly run, or overfunded and stuffed with time-card punchers and poorly run? Oh woe is the politician that tries to reform that particular outfit.
Oh, Ikram, thanks for the information and for clarifying the point about immigration fraud and illegal status 🙂
Manish,
Yep !
Although a little “liquid lubrication*” probably aggravates the situation 😉
liquid lubrication
No not that kind, Abhi…..
Not when I lived in London– PDA-while-sober was rare, and a Southall friend concurs. After a few pints was a different matter entirely.
Clearly I should’ve been hanging out in your circles 😉
It tends to happen more during the summer — you know the effect it can have on people: sun shining, nice warm weather, birds singing etc etc. Probably not that different to what it’s like in the parks in the US during the summer months.
Southall may be a different matter as it’s a high-density Indian area and such behaviour in public is “frowned upon” by the local aunties and uncles — although you see plenty of hand-holding and “hands around the waist”-action on the Broadway during the summer. Scandalous, scandalous stuff 😉
I’m glad I clarified the “lubrication” matter before Abhi’s eyes lit up a little too much…..Dodgy geezer 😉
just kidding
No one asked to see MY sham wedding photos when I applied for my visa. (although a 30-sec city hall ceremony hardly qualifies as a wedding) 😉 Heck, we’d even brought photos to prove we were a couple (albeit only getting married so I could work in his country — when they make it impossible for normal people to legitimately work and pay taxes somewhere else, what do they freaking expect?) and they didn’t ask for anything other than the basic documents, or even give our brown & white faces a second glance. Granted, it was between two first-world countries, but I’d come prepared for the 3rd degree (think of that final scene in “Green Card”) and didn’t get it. So my question is, what are they looking at in situations like Pannu’s to prove or disprove marital sham-iness? We had to prove that we had somewhere to live and money in our bank accounts, that was it.
That’s right, Sikhs, like Klingon’s never smile. Do you see my smiling in my photo? That’s right! We don’t smile … unless we’re jolly …
Actually, there is a deeper problem here. What does it mean to have a “real” marriage? Insofar as the state is concerned, what they want is a marriage with longevity, but they don’t want to force somebody to stay in a marriage that doesn’t work by threatening to deport them if they get divorced.
Still, what’s the difference between a greencard marriage and an arranged marriage that doesn’t work and quickly leads to divorce?
Ennis, I was thinking the same thing. Good post Abhi.
Ennis,
I remember reading quite a few news reports last here here in Ingerlaanda that apna Tony Blair was considering banning arranged marriages to foreign nationals (ie. those from the Indian subcontinent), due to the perceived incidence of people just using marriage as a way of acquiring British citizenship.
He may have a point…..It’s not exactly uncommon for desis back in India to either be explicitly looking for an arranged marriage partner in the UK or the US as a way of migrating to a perceived “better life” over here (even if they don’t necessarily intend to divorce their spouses once residency has been gained), or — if they are here on temporary work visas/assignments — to say “I’ll just find some guy/girl here and will gain permanent citizenship that way….Ho jayega wink…..”
Know what I mean ?