Canada · Family sponsorship
A genuine relationship can still be refused if it is poorly evidenced
Canada recognises three kinds of partner relationship, and assesses all of them on the same question: is this real, and was it entered into for the reason you say. That question is answered by a stranger reading a file.
The three categories
Which relationship you are actually in
These are legal categories with different evidence requirements. Applying under the wrong one is a common and avoidable reason for delay.
Married spouse
A marriage Canada recognises
Common-law partner
Cohabitation, continuously
Conjugal partner
Committed, but prevented
The categories are not interchangeable, and you do not choose between them for convenience. A couple who have lived together for the required period are common-law partners whether or not they think of themselves that way. A couple who have never cohabited and face no genuine barrier to marrying or living together are generally neither common-law nor conjugal, however committed they are.
The conjugal category in particular is misunderstood. It exists for couples kept apart by something serious — an immigration barrier, a legal prohibition on the marriage, or social or religious consequences of a severity a decision-maker will recognise. Distance, work, cost and family disapproval on their own are rarely enough. If you are considering it, the barrier itself has to be documented as carefully as the relationship.
The qualifying periods and the precise wording of each definition are set out in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations and summarised by IRCC on canada.ca. Check them there rather than relying on a figure quoted on any consultant’s page, including ours.
The choice with real consequences
Inland or outland
Not a filing formality. It determines whether the applicant can work, whether they can leave Canada, and what happens if the application is refused.
Inland
The applicant is in Canada with the sponsor and applies from within the country. The practical draw is that an open work permit may be available while the application is processed, which for many couples is the difference between one income and two.
The costs are real. The applicant is expected to remain in Canada, and leaving during processing risks being unable to return — which matters if a parent falls ill or a sibling marries. And if the application is refused, an inland decision does not carry a right of appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division. The remaining route is judicial review at the Federal Court, which reviews how the decision was made rather than re-deciding the relationship.
Outland
The application is processed through a visa office abroad, which is the usual route where the applicant is in Pakistan or elsewhere outside Canada. The applicant is not tied to staying in Canada and can travel, subject to holding whatever entry document they would otherwise need.
The significant advantage is the right of appeal. If a family class sponsorship is refused, the sponsor can generally appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division, which can hear evidence and reach its own conclusion about the relationship — a fundamentally stronger remedy than judicial review. For a couple whose file rests on genuineness, that matters.
What outland does not usually offer is work authorisation for an applicant who is not already in Canada with status.
Choose for your circumstances, not for speed
Couples routinely pick a route on the basis of which they have heard is faster. Timing varies by office and changes; appeal rights and the ability to travel do not. If the relationship is one that will need to be explained — a short courtship, a large age difference, a previous sponsorship, an earlier refusal — the right of appeal is worth weighing heavily.
The actual test
What genuineness means in practice
The law asks two things about a partner relationship: whether it is genuine, and whether it was entered into primarily for the purpose of acquiring status or privilege under Canadian immigration law. A relationship that fails either limb is excluded.
What an officer is doing is narrower than people imagine. They are not judging whether you love each other. They are asking whether the documents in front of them, read together, are consistent with two people who are actually in a relationship — and whether the account each of you gives holds up against the other’s.
That is why volume does not help. A thousand chat screenshots from the last two months evidence the last two months. Six independent documents spread across three years evidence three years.
What gets weighed
The dimensions officers look at
How the relationship began
A coherent account of how you met, who introduced you, and how the relationship developed — one that both of you tell the same way.
Communication over time
Contact that is continuous and two-way across the whole relationship, not a burst assembled shortly before filing.
Time spent together
Visits, stays, travel — with the ordinary traces they leave: stamps, tickets, bookings, photographs with other people in them.
Knowledge of each other
Each of you knowing the other’s family, work, circumstances and plans in the way people in a real relationship do.
Recognition by others
Family and community treating you as a couple — invitations, ceremonies, correspondence, declarations to employers or institutions.
Interdependence
Financial support, shared responsibilities, insurance and beneficiary designations, plans made jointly rather than in parallel.
Arranged marriage is not a red flag. Thin evidence is.
An arranged marriage is a normal way for a marriage to come about and is assessed on precisely the same genuineness test as any other. Nobody is entitled to treat it as suspect because of how the introduction happened.
What does cause trouble is the evidentiary shape such a marriage often has: a short period between introduction and ceremony, limited contact before it, families who arranged matters between them, and few of the joint financial or residential records that a long cohabitation produces. None of that makes the marriage less real. All of it means the file has to be built deliberately — the ceremony documented properly, family involvement evidenced, contact from the introduction onwards preserved, and both spouses genuinely able to speak about each other’s circumstances if asked.
The sequence
How the application runs
Two applications assessed as one: the sponsor’s undertaking and the applicant’s permanent residence.
- 1
Confirm the sponsor is eligible
A Canadian citizen, permanent resident or registered Indian, meeting the sponsorship undertaking requirements. Certain past defaults, some criminal convictions and previous sponsorships can bar a sponsor.
- 2
Decide inland or outland
This choice affects work authorisation, travel and appeal rights. It is made once, at the start, and is difficult to unwind later.
- 3
Build the relationship record
The heart of the file. Assembled around a timeline of the relationship rather than dumped in as an undifferentiated pile of screenshots.
- 4
File sponsor and applicant together
The sponsorship undertaking and the permanent residence application are assessed as one package. A weakness on either side stalls both.
- 5
Medicals, police and biometrics
Standard admissibility steps for the applicant and any accompanying dependants, requested on the department’s schedule.
- 6
Interview or further evidence, if asked
Not every file is interviewed. If yours is, or if a procedural fairness letter arrives, that is the moment the case is usually won or lost.
What commonly goes wrong
The failure patterns we see from Pakistan
Evidence that starts when the application does. A relationship record that begins a few weeks before filing invites the obvious inference. Contact and shared documents from the beginning of the relationship are worth more than anything gathered afterwards.
Two versions of the same story. Where an interview happens, the spouses are often asked about the same events separately. Honest people contradict each other when they have never sat down and compared what they each remember. That is not coaching — it is preparation, and it is legitimate.
A ceremony documented only by photographs. Photographs of the couple alone prove little. Registration documents, invitations, guests in the frame, and records from third parties who were involved carry far more weight.
Assuming the marriage certificate settles it. A valid marriage establishes the legal relationship. It says nothing about genuineness, which is a separate finding an officer must make on separate evidence.
An undisclosed prior relationship or dependant. Previous marriages, prior sponsorships and children who were not examined during an earlier application all have consequences. Concealing them converts a manageable problem into a misrepresentation finding.
Documents someone else prepared. Statements, letters and affidavits arranged by a third party and containing claims you cannot personally support are misrepresentation whether or not you wrote them. The consequence lands on the applicant. What misrepresentation means.
Being honest about fit
Who this route does not suit
Some situations should not be filed yet — or at all
A relationship entered into primarily so that one partner can come to Canada is excluded by law, and because that test looks at why the relationship was formed in the first place, later evidence of a shared life does not reliably cure it. If that is the actual arrangement, no amount of documentation makes it a spousal application, and pursuing it risks a misrepresentation finding that will follow the applicant for years.
This route also does not suit a sponsor who cannot meet the undertaking requirements, a couple who have not yet accumulated any independent record of their relationship, or a couple considering the conjugal category with no barrier they can actually document. In several of those cases the right advice is to wait and build the record properly, not to file now and hope.
And if the goal is simply to bring a partner to Canada quickly, sponsorship may not be the mechanism — a partner with their own qualifications may have a stronger and faster route in their own right. See the skilled-worker routes.
We would rather tell you on the first call that a file is not ready than take a fee for one that was going to be refused. That is why we publish a no-guarantee policy.
Where the current details live
Fees, forms and processing
Government fees, processing times, forms and document checklists change, and they differ by visa office. We deliberately do not publish those figures here, because a number that is right today is a liability on a page you read next year.
IRCC publishes the current requirements for family sponsorship on canada.ca, and the definitions of spouse, common-law partner and conjugal partner — along with the exclusion for relationships entered into primarily for immigration purposes — sit in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. Read the figures at the source, on the day you need them.
If a previous application was refused and you do not know why, the reasoning in the officer’s notes is usually the fastest way to understand what the file was missing. How to obtain GCMS notes.
Straight answers
The questions people actually ask
Is an arranged marriage treated as suspect?
My relationship is real. Can it still be refused?
Should I apply inland or outland?
Can the applicant work while the application is processed?
Can the applicant visit or stay in Canada while waiting?
What happens if we separate while the application is pending?
How long does it take and what does it cost?
Can you guarantee approval if the relationship is genuine?
Before you file
Have the relationship record reviewed while it can still be fixed
Tell us how the relationship began, where each of you is, and what documents you already hold. We will tell you honestly whether the file is ready, which route fits, and what is missing.